


Devil in a Green Dress

by AstroLass



Series: AstroLass rewrites Season 7 [2]
Category: Supernatural
Genre: Bisexual Dean Winchester, Canon-Typical Violence, Canon-compliant through mid-Season 7 but then all bets are off, Case Fic, Castiel Has Feelings for Dean Winchester, Dean Winchester Has Feelings For Castiel, F/M, Fairies, I Wrote This Instead of Sleeping, I mean really slow (not getting resolved in this installment), John Wincester's A+ Parenting, Late Night Conversations, Nightmares, PTSD, Rating is for language (swearing), Sam Winchester Knows, Slow Burn
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-08-18
Updated: 2020-12-29
Packaged: 2021-03-06 05:27:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 23,505
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25978222
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AstroLass/pseuds/AstroLass
Summary: Sequel to Black Dog (https://archiveofourown.org/works/23440774)Continuing my remix of Season 7 and the premise that just making Castiel female doesn't make a relationship with Dean quick or easy.Young men are being killed in suburban Illinois, so Dean and Sam take Cas out for her first case since her resurrection as a mostly human female.   Typical SPN hijinks ensue.  Sam struggles with flashbacks to the Cage.  Cas tries to comprehend being human.  Dean tries to dodge what he's feeling because he's afraid of messing up his relationship with his best friend.  And to top it off, there's fairies.  Dean hates fairies.
Relationships: Castiel/Dean Winchester
Series: AstroLass rewrites Season 7 [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1885492
Comments: 6
Kudos: 12





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Three weeks after the end of Black Dog

CASTIEL

  
According to the clock on the nightstand, it was 3:19 a.m. Castiel had been in bed for hours without any hint of sleep. She had tried meditating. She had tried reading the book Sam had suggested to her, but it was far too interesting and did more to keep her awake than relax her. No matter that the human body in which she now found herself needed sleep, it stubbornly, inexplicably, refused to sleep. This was the second night in a row of no sleep at all, the third week of fighting to get even scraps of restful sleep. She’d been managing the nightmares. But this obdurate refusal by her body and brain to let her have what her body clearly needed was profoundly frustrating. If her body didn’t relent soon and let her sleep, she’d have a ferocious headache by the time the sun came up. 

She hated all of it. The physical aches and pains of a human body. The need for sleep that simply wouldn’t come. The need to eat, drink, bathe, excrete, all of it. Six weeks of this now and it was getting no easier.

Worse yet, alone in the deep, quiet parts of night, she couldn’t escape her own memories. Despite all of the things she no longer had, her perfect angelic memory remained relentlessly intact. She could recall in exquisite detail every horrible choice and every horrible deed. Betraying the angels who’d believed in her. Deceiving and betraying the only true friends she’d ever had. At night, those memories were as strong as if they were happening right now. 

Once the memories started coursing through her brain, the feelings that followed them burned like fire and acid. Regret. Remorse. Guilt. Angels didn’t feel those things, or at least didn’t feel them the way humans did. As an angel, her feelings had been muted and distant unless they were useful feelings like righteous fury. “Useful” being “useful to Heaven’s agenda,” of course. Feelings such as compassion or empathy were experienced only at a careful distance and anything like regret or guilt barely even that. She was sure now that she had been sent back (again) as a human, with a perfect memory and all of these complicated, intense, harrowing human feelings, as her punishment. 

Her body informed her of its need to use the toilet and she sighed in frustration. Perhaps getting out of the bed was for the best, though. She could take a walk around the back yard then sit outside for a time and look at the stars, which always seemed to settle her. If she were very lucky, Dean might still be awake. She’d never wake him up for company, but if he were also awake and struggling to sleep, well, then he might appreciate companionship too. If he were in a good enough mood, she might even convince him to show her one of the television shows or movies he loved. Watching Dean react to a story was often better than watching the story itself. 

Dean was sleeping on the couch, curled on his side so his legs fit. They’d argued over that twice now. In this new body, she was shorter and smaller and could sleep (or more likely not sleep) comfortably on the couch, while the king-sized bed in the master bedroom fit Dean’s larger frame. But Dean had insisted that he’d slept in worse places and that she deserved the extra comfort of a proper bed while she was still adjusting to being human and needing sleep. Rather than being helpful, Sam had simply shrugged in amused exasperation at his brother’s stubbornness.

She could tell at a glance that Dean wasn’t sleeping well at all. He was fidgeting and talking in his sleep, not intelligibly, but clearly enough that Castiel could tell the dream wasn’t a good one. She had seen him like this many times. Before, it had just taken the slightest breath of grace to ease him. Now? Now he was in pain and she was useless.

Perhaps, if the angel way of doing things no longer worked, a human way might. She knelt beside the couch and laid a hand on Dean’s arm, right at the spot where she had left her mark when she dragged him out of Hell. “Dean, it’s just a dream. None of it is real. Let it go,” she whispered. He flinched. “Dean,” she repeated as gently as she could, “it’s all right. I’m here. I’ll protect you.” It sounded foolish, ridiculous almost, coming out of her graceless human mouth, but she said it anyway, hoping that Dean’s dream logic would remember her as an angel.

“Cas? Izzat you?” he murmured, still mostly asleep. His eyes cracked open halfway but she wasn’t sure he was seeing anything.

“Yes. It’s me. You were having a nightmare. Go back to sleep. I’ll keep watch.”

“Okay.” Dean shifted, pressing himself deeper into the couch cushions and folding his arms across his chest. Castiel let her hand fall away from his arm. 

After a few minutes of kneeling beside the couch, listening to the deep steady breathing that told her Dean was sleeping peacefully, Castiel felt her joints begin to object. This was new too, these physical aches and pains from doing things that had once been effortless, and it was profoundly unwelcome. Despite the discomfort, she was reluctant to leave. Better sitting here, watching over Dean, than spending more stubbornly wakeful hours in bed. She settled into a more comfortable sitting position against the couch. She would wait there until the sun came up, then go try again to catch a few hours of rest. 

  
DEAN

  
Dean was sure he was dreaming but not sure enough. It had to be a dream because Alastair was dead, he’d watched Sam ice that fucker, so Alastair couldn’t possibly be here, putting Dean on the rack again, flaying, slicing and laughing at his screams. But that was Alastair’s touch and Alastair’s way with pain and Alastair’s smug snake smile so maybe everything else was the dream and this was real and he’d never been rescued from Hell and Alastair was going to keep at him until his soul shattered into a thousand jagged black pieces. He was small and broken and hurt and afraid, even more so because he knew what was coming, what always came, what always happened no matter how loudly he screamed and how hard he fought. Any minute now Alastair would turn those cold, dead shark eyes on him and tell him again how it could all be over if he’d just agree to take up the blade himself and torture someone else and this time he’d break and say yes and the whole ball would start rolling down the hill towards The End and it was all his fault because he was weak and pathetic and . . . 

The warmth of the hand on his arm cut through the dream, banishing Alastair and all the pain. “Dean, it’s just a dream. None of it is real. Let it go.” The voice wasn’t quite right but it was right in all the ways that mattered and he knew what that hand meant. He was saved. Cas was here, pulling him out of Hell. “Dean, it’s all right. I’m here. I’ll protect you.” Cas was here. He was safe. He could sleep.

Someone who wasn’t Dean was snoring lightly and that didn’t make any sense because he knew he hadn’t gone home with anyone last night. He should still be curled up on the couch in the Minnesota ranch house where they were crashed while they worked out things with Cas’s new life and looked for their next case. But there was a definitely a dead weight against his chest and the softness of long hair against his hand, and those little snores sure as hell didn’t belong to his Sasquatch baby brother. He opened his eyes slowly, inching one hand towards the gun stowed between the couch cushions, but then pulled up short. Cas was sitting on the floor next to the couch and had fallen asleep with her head resting against his chest.

The way he’d managed to break out of last night’s nightmare made a lot more sense now. Cas really had been here to pull him out of it. Then, of course, because it was Cas, she’d sat here all night watching him sleep until she’d eventually fallen asleep herself. Stupid, sentimental crap. But kinda sweet too. And he had to admit that, up close like this, her hair smelled nice, like a grassy field after the rain, which wasn’t the worst thing to wake up to.

The clock on the television stand read 6:40 a.m. He had no idea how long Cas had been here. One thing for sure, though, he definitely didn’t want Sam finding them like this. His brother had already made one too many pointed references to Dean and Cas finally going beyond “two solid years of eye-fucking” now that Cas was in a female body, and he was sick of telling Sam to shut the hell up. Yeah, sure, Cas 2.0 was a babe, and if she’d been some random woman he’d met while out on a case, he’d have been all in. But this wasn’t some random woman he was never going to see again. This was _Cas_. Regardless of what meat suit Cas was wearing, there were hundreds of good reasons to keep it in his pants. An angel, even a fallen one, deserved better than a broken mess like him. Okay, there had been Anna, but that had been a foxhole “last night on earth” thing that he hadn’t expected to last. If he actually started something with Cas it would be . . . well . . . not that. And right there was another good reason to keep Cas safely at arms’ length – he couldn’t afford to have anyone else besides Sam inside his defenses, couldn’t allow himself to get too close to someone else who could be used against him. So even though she smelled nice and even though his fingers had been stroking her hair for the last few minutes without consulting his brain first about whether that was okay, it was time to get back on the “personal space” train. He had managed to keep his hands to himself just fine for more than two years now, even though original Cas had been way hotter (not that Dean would admit this anywhere except in his own head because Dad had made it very very clear that no son of his wanted to have sex with men and that was that). He’d just keep on doing that.

“Hey, time to wake up, buddy,” he said, doing his best to sit up slowly without dumping Cas’s head too hard onto the couch cushions.

She raised dopey, half-lidded eyes to him and he wondered how little rest she’d actually gotten last night. “I saw that you were having a nightmare. You seemed to sleep better when I was here, so I stayed,” she explained. “I meant to go back to my room once you’d settled. What time is it?” She rubbed her eyes and tried to focus on the clock.

“Little after six-thirty. You’ve got some time yet if you wanna go back to your bed,” Dean responded.

Cas laid her hand on his knee, probably just a gesture of concern, probably because his knee was the closest thing to her right now, but it still too much for his comfort level. He gently moved her hand to the couch, then shifted away by a few inches.

“Look, no harm no foul this time, but you can’t do stuff like this, Cas. Watching me sleep? Falling asleep on me? It’s weird and a little creepy,” Dean objected.

Cas gave him the head tilt, confusion written all over those big (gorgeous – nope, don’t go there, he chided himself) blue eyes. “I don’t understand. You slept better after I was here. The only good night’s sleep I’ve had since becoming human was our first night in this house when you stayed with me. If being near each other lets us both sleep without nightmares, what’s wrong with that?”

“It’s not something we do, okay?!” He knew he sounded angry but maybe a little anger would drive the point home. “God, I need coffee,” he grumbled, not waiting for Cas’s answer.

He thought he caught a hurt look flash across her face, but it was gone quickly enough that he might have imagined it. “I’m going to try to get another hour or so of sleep before I have to talk to the lawyer about the house and the money,” she said. “I know you and Sam can’t be happy sitting around waiting for this all to be resolved.” She picked herself up off the floor and retreated to the master bedroom without another word, leaving Dean feeling a little bit like an ass even though he knew he was doing the right thing.

He went out for a drive to clear his head, using the excuse that they were almost out of coffee beans, a definite red alert situation. He was going to miss this whole “drinking freshly ground coffee in the morning” thing once they returned to their normal hunter lifestyle of crapsack motels and truck stop food.

They’d all agreed it made sense to stay in Minnesota, in a comfortable house they didn’t have to pay for, while the weird situation with Cas and her new meat suit got worked out. There was a substantial amount of money relating to the accident that had killed Michelle Swanson’s family and put her into the coma that had left her body empty for Cas to inhabit. Plus, her body had been out of it for long enough that the hospital had a legal guardian appointed and Cas couldn’t do anything for herself until she established she was competent. There always seemed to be one more phone call with a lawyer or one more set of papers to sign before any of it got worked out. So, for the last three weeks they’d been all nice and domestic, like taking a vacation in an old sitcom.

Even though he was getting a little antsy, Dean had to admit that the down time was doing them all some good. For one thing, camped out safely in the suburbs, Sam was able to use sleeping pills to dodge his Hell flashbacks without worrying that he was leaving Dean without someone to watch his back. The more rest Sam got, the better he seemed to be handling his visions of the Cage. They were also making good use of the downtime to teach Cas normal people stuff, like how to drive a car, how to do laundry, how to use a computer, as well as a handling few hunter things like teaching her how to shoot and basic firearms safety, and getting her an anti-possession tattoo. He was immensely thankful that her first driving lessons had been in a piece of crap car instead of his Baby because he didn’t think he could have handled it otherwise. It had been almost as bad as teaching Sam – his brother only ten, just barely tall enough to reach the pedals, him a cocky thirteen, sitting in the passenger seat trying to hide his white knuckles as Sam drove around an empty parking lot in an ancient stolen junker with no seat belts. 

By the time he returned to the house, armed with coffee beans, dinner fixings and a couple of other necessities, Cas was showered, dressed and sitting at the kitchen table frowning at the laptop they’d bought for her. At glance at the screen told him she was staring at blocks of text in a language he didn’t understand. She seemed to be getting the hang of the computer research thing pretty well, all things considered. “Whatcha readin’?” he asked as he stowed the groceries.

“A university in Europe recently digitized several early Ugaritic manuscripts on the nature of souls and soul-based magic. This one is much better than the usual human attempts to understand such things, but far from as helpful as I’d hoped it would be,” she answered. 

“Ya know, you don’t have to be all heavy lifting all the time. Download some cat videos or something.” He caught himself before he repeated what he usually said to Sam in situations like this – go watch some porn – because that was not something he wanted to discuss with Cas right now. Or ever. Instead, he focused on the very safe task of making a fresh pot of coffee. They’d already blown through the one he made first thing this morning.

“I do like animal videos and nature programs. Sir David Attenborough has an exceptionally soothing voice. But watching nature shows isn’t going to help Sam. Reading Ugaritic manuscripts might,” Cas said.

“Speaking of Sam, is he up and about yet?” 

“He didn’t have a good night either. He said he was going to try to sleep a little more,” Cas answered. “I’m very worried about him,” she added after a moment.

“You and me both, but I’m outta good ideas. Hell, I’m outta bad ideas.” Dean scanned the counters for his coffee mug from earlier, couldn’t find it, so gave up and grabbed a new one from the cabinet. “Hey, I don’t suppose any of your old angel buddies –“ 

She cut him off sharply. “I don’t have any more ‘old angel buddies.’ I killed most of them. If you really want to talk to Heaven about helping Sam, I’m of no use to you. No one in Heaven answers when I call, remember?” 

Every word she’d said was true, but Dean hated watching her kick herself. “Hey. Cas. Uh, well, uh, I didn’t mean to make you feel like crap. Not now and not this morning,” he offered. It was feeble but it was something.

Cas was quiet for a while, staying focused on what she was reading. When the coffee maker signaled the new pot, Dean poured fresh coffee over the dregs in her mug and filled a new mug for himself. He’d taught her to drink it black like he did – all the better to heat up later when you let it get cold and easier to clean off your shirt when you spilled it while driving. 

“I think I am the one who should be apologizing to you,” she said, catching his eye as she wrapped both hands around the now steaming mug. “I misunderstood human social customs yet again.”

“Before everything went wrong, I was a good angel,” Cas continued. “I didn’t lead a strike force into Hell because I was expendable. I was chosen because I was very good at my job. I knew what I was supposed to do and I did it in the most effective way possible and I was content. But now? Now I can’t seem to get anything right. I can’t help you and I can’t fix Sam and I can’t even sleep properly. There are all of these rules and unspoken things I’m supposed to know, but I don’t, so I keep making mistakes like I did this morning. It’s frustrating and exhausting and I hate it.”

“Cas …” Dean really didn’t know what to say, so he let his words trail off into nothing. He wanted to put a hand on her shoulder, just a gesture to let her know he wasn’t really angry with her, but how could he do that after he’d pushed her away just a few hours ago? 

With his usual perfect timing, Sam chose that moment to stroll into the kitchen. “Hey guys, I think I finally found us a case!”


	2. Chapter 2

SAM

By the way Dean and Cas both flinched when he walked into the kitchen, Sam knew he was interrupting something. Again.

On the whole, it was pretty good having Cas around all the time. There were still days when Sam couldn’t look at her without being pissed off about the lies, the Leviathans and the flashbacks to Hell that ran on a continuous loop in his brain. Yet, at the same time, it was nice to have someone around other than Dean. Cas was full of so much marvelous and obscure information that she was a joy to talk to, as long as you didn’t mind taking a few detours along the way. Plus, at his suggestion, as part of figuring out what it meant to be human, Cas was working her way through some of his favorite books from his college literature classes. They’d spent a cool hour or so last night talking about the book version of _Frankenstein_ before Dean had de-railed things with references to Boris Karloff movies. It was also nice to be able to avoid sitting through Dean’s favorite movies or favorite albums for the thousandth time without a scrap of guilt. Now Dean could inflict them on Cas instead.

But this weird “thing” between Dean and Cas was starting to become actively uncomfortable. When Cas had only been around sometimes, usually in the middle of a major crisis, it had been easier to overlook the way the two of them could just stare at each other and ignore everything – and everyone – else in the room. Sam used to wonder if there was some kind of angel telepathy between them, but they were still doing it now that Cas was powerless. Plus, when it came to Cas, Dean was constantly pushing the limits of what could reasonably be called “big brother concern.” Sam certainly couldn’t remember Dean being quite so hands-on when teaching him how to drive or do chores.

And Cas, the ancient celestial being trapped in a normal human body? She seemed perfectly happy with all of Dean’s over-protective hovering, all the clasps on the shoulder, and all the other little touches and almost-touches that his brother couldn’t seem to resist when it came to her. When they’d watch movies or TV together, Sam could swear she spent more time watching his brother than watching whatever was on the screen. She would even smile, shy and hesitant as if she were afraid she’d be scolded for it, every time Dean time smacked her arm and told her to watch carefully because the “good part” was coming up. Plus, even in an entirely different body, she still had that weird Castiel way of gazing at Dean as though he were the most wonderful thing in the universe. Sam had watched a lot of people ogle his brother’s good looks over the years, but the way Cas looked at Dean was so far beyond anything that simple.

Now here they were again, Cas looking at Dean and Dean looking at Cas and Sam feeling like a third wheel in his own life.

“Whatcha got, Sammy?” Dean asked, sitting at the head of the kitchen table, the place he’d claimed as his own during their “family dinners.”

“Belchamp, Illinois. Over the last four months, four men dead and completely drained of blood. Sounds like our kind of thing,” Sam said, showing off news reports on his laptop.

“That it does,” Dean agreed. “How come no one else has jumped on this one yet?”

“Seems like the police were keeping it pretty hush-hush until the last few days or so. But now one of the families is raising a stink and insisting that it’s a serial killer and that the locals need to call in the FBI. They put up a website and everything. The way you drive, Belchamp’s about four and a half hours away. What do you think?” Sam asked.

“I think you hit the jackpot. Let’s do this thing,” Dean declared with a happy slap of his hand on the kitchen table. “Take a few days, gank some blood-suckers, and get Cas back in time to sign more paperwork and get all this lawyer nonsense put to bed.”

“You make any progress on your call this morning, Cas?” Sam asked.

“I think so. Your friend Jody Mills has been a great help explaining all of these money things to me. I would very much like to meet her one day,” Cas responded. “What is left of the life insurance money after paying all the bills should be released into Michelle Swanson’s bank account this week. There’s still a lawsuit settlement in the works, but that might be months before it’s resolved. Tell me, is $800,000 a great deal of money in human terms?”

Dean did a full honest-to-God spit take with his coffee. Sam was glad he hadn’t been drinking anything or else he probably would have done the same. He pushed the laptops out of the way as Dean frantically mopped up the mess with a dishtowel. “Holy crap, Cas, you’re rich!” Dean declared.

“Yeah, uh, wow. Just wow. That’s more money than I think Dean and I have seen in our whole lives,” Sam added. “You could do just about anything you want.”

“I want to help you, of course. I understand now that you need money to hunt, so we’ll use this money,” Cas said as if it were the most obvious thing in the world. Sam wasn’t sure why he’d thought for even a moment that Cas might do anything else with a pile of money. He wasn’t even sure she knew how to want things for herself, which was kind and weird and sad all at the same time. Which pretty much summed up Cas.

Dean shook his head in disbelief. “Well, hell, look at our sugar momma,” he joked.

Sam stopped himself short of saying something really snarky to his brother. Cas was smiling that half grin that she allowed herself when she thought she’d finally gotten some human thing right and Sam didn’t want to spoil the moment for her. Instead he simply asked, “So we’ll roll for Belchamp in what, an hour or so?”

Sam was deeply relieved to be getting back to work. Rest was great and all, but work let him focus. Focus mostly stopped his head from coughing up flashbacks from the Cage or, worse, manifesting a chatty, distracting Lucifer. Well, focus and the sheer amount of valerian and Saint John’s wort he was downing with his coffee every morning. Over-the-counter calmers only went so far, though.

Sam threw his hunting clothes into his bag along with a couple of clean dress shirts and ties to go with his FBI suits, all recently dry-cleaned and hanging in a suit hanger he’d “borrowed” from Michelle Swanson’s dead husband. He stared thoughtfully at the bottle of prescription sleeping pills on the guest room nightstand and debated bringing them too. The hospital had sent them home for Cas but she didn’t want them. He’d been more than happy to use them instead, even though he hated the fuzzy, dopey feeling in his head in the mornings after he took one. With a grimace, he threw them in his bag. He’d take them if he had to. The last thing he wanted to do was keep everyone awake all night while he screamed his way through dreams of the Cage.

Not for the first time, Sam thought about checking himself into a mental hospital to get some real psych meds. But would even high quality anti-psychotics do anything for supernatural PTSD inflicted by the Devil himself? Even trying to explain why he needed the drugs would get him locked up for a long time. So for now it was herbs, meditation exercises, and some high-quality sleeping pills when it was safe to take them. Sooner or later, though, Sam knew he was going to crack for good and no brotherly pep talk was going to fix him. He was trying to make it as much later as possible, hopefully later enough that they could figure out a solution. But the crack was coming and it was just a question of when.

DEAN

This month’s car was a beat-up 1970 Barracuda in a nasty shade of orange that was a horrible thing to inflict on any car, much less one that could have been pretty sweet if anyone had ever taken care of it. With a little TLC, Dean had gotten the engine humming nicely, even if the suspension was mostly a lost cause and the steering wheel shook when he went over 75 mph. She couldn’t hold a candle to his Baby, but it still felt good to open up the V-8 engine on the mostly empty highway towards Belchamp. The air was warming into full spring so he had the windows down, a decent rock station on the radio, and his two favorite people in the world in the car with him.

Some too-clever radio jock decided to follow up _Runnin’ with the Devil_ with _Why Can’t This Be Love_ , reigniting his never-ending debate with his brother about the best Van Halen front man. “Hey Cas, settle this for us. David Lee Roth kicks Sammy Hagar’s ass, right?” Dean yelled over the radio.

Cas was, of all things, curled up in the back seat reading a book. She responded to Dean’s question with a confused look. “I’m sorry, I have no idea what you’re talking about.” There was only one cure for that.

“Tapes, Sammy!” Dean barked. Sam groaned, but he grabbed the box of tapes from the passenger seat floor. For the next few hours, it was wall-to-wall Van Halen. Dean alternated between singing along with the music and good-natured jibing with Sam. Cas asked a lot of weird ass music questions and never really settled the debate, but even that was fine because there was an open road in front of him with a job at the end.

Around dinner time, they pulled into the parking lot of a hotel off the main highway that advertised itself as all suites. Two queen sized beds plus a pull-out couch in the sitting area meant they didn’t have to split up. Yeah, they could have afforded two rooms, but it made Dean feel better to have both Sam and Cas right there where he could keep an eye on them, especially with Sam still having hallucinations and Cas being so new to humanity. He started to claim the pull-out couch but Cas got there first, dropping her overnight bag and her laptop case like an explorer planting a flag and glaring at him until he gave in.

Over some Chinese take-out, they dug in and researched the case. Sam worked his geek magic on the Belchamp police database and made it spit out the names of the four victims: David Boddicker, Matthew Stupak, Shawn Nesbitt and John Ponca. Their bodies had all been found in the park system along the river under piles of rocks. They’d all been fully clothed, wallets still full of money and credit cards, but not a drop of blood in their veins.

Ponca was the most recent victim. His family was the one raising the stink. Dean skimmed over the Ponca family website. Pictures showed a clean-shaven guy with light brown skin, deep brown eyes and shoulder-length dark hair. He was some sort of teacher because the “in memorium” page was full of messages from students. The dude looked youngish to be teaching, maybe 25-26 at most, and every single picture showed him laughing or smiling a big goofy grin. He was good-looking, happy, with a whole life ahead of him. No wonder his family was shattered. They’d definitely want to talk to the Ponca family as soon as they could, before the real FBI showed up. Meanwhile, Sam had managed to dig up photos of the other victims. The killer definitely had a type: they were good-looking men in their 20s with dark hair. Well, they wouldn’t have to look far for bait, if it came to that.

“Any links among the victims?” Dean asked.

Sam frowned at his laptop screen. “Nothing jumps out. Nesbitt and Stupak both worked IT jobs in the area, but not at the same companies. Ponca taught music at a middle school in Rockford. Boddicker was a mechanic who worked and lived in Elgin, almost 45 minutes away from here. Only Ponca was originally from Belchamp. The others don’t even seem to have much in the way of family around here. Nesbitt’s originally from New Jersey, Boddicker and his people are all in Chicago, and Stupak moved here from Cleveland last year with his girlfriend, who got a job teaching at Rock Valley College.”

“The Ponca family is bitchin’ on the website that they haven’t released their son’s body yet. County morgue our first stop tomorrow?” Dean asked.

Sam grumbled, “Yeah, I’ll make sure I skip breakfast.”

“Uh, what should I be doing?” Cas asked.

“Well, I didn’t get a chance to do a fake FBI ID for you yet, so consultant?” Sam suggested.

“We could sell that. Cas as a nerdy professor isn’t exactly a stretch,” Dean agreed.

“Thank you?” Cas replied, clearly trying to figure out what the right response should be. As he dug through the take-out bag for the last fortune cookie, Dean shot her a grin to let her know he wasn’t insulting her, just teasing. She gave him a little half nod in return. Cas was getting better at dealing with banter. In a few more weeks, she might even have a sense of humor. He found two cookies at the bottom of the bag and tossed her one. Unlike his health nut brother, Cas didn’t say no to cookies.

“Hey, Cas, why don’t you grab the first shower before Sam uses up all the hot water on his hair,” Dean suggested. When it came to the kind of basic background research into regular lives that they were doing now, she wasn’t all that much help. Besides, a few minutes without Cas would give him a chance to check up on Sam.

Dean waited until he heard the sound of water running to get his brother’s attention. “So, how’s your head, Sammy? You all good to be back in the game?”

Sam shrugged. “I’m not great, not even in the neighborhood of great, but I’ll hold. I mean, this hunt was my idea. I wouldn’t have suggested it if I didn’t think I was up for it.”

“And that stuff you’re dumping in your coffee every morning?” Dean prodded.

“Valerian and Saint John’s wort. They’re herbal therapies for calming. They don’t take the edge off my reflexes or my brain, don’t worry,” Sam replied, edging into snippy and annoyed.

Dean chuckled and shook his head. “I’ve been worrying about you since I was four years old. I’m not gonna stop now and you know that.”

“I promise, if things get too bad, I’ll say something. But I want to work. I need to work. I can ignore the hallucinations better when I’m working,” Sam said, still dancing on the edge of annoyed.

“You gotta promise, man. Don’t say ‘I’m fine’ when you’re really not.”

“So don’t do what you do all the time,” Sam retorted.

Dean took the shot – it was completely fair – and weighed pressing his brother for more details. Watching Sam rub his fingers along his right temple, Dean decided against it. Sam’s whole body language said “headache” and poking at him more now would only get them into an argument, which wouldn’t help anything. He let Sam continue to work on the case until Cas came out of the bathroom. Then he cajoled Sam into the shower, knowing full well that hot water would relax his brother, making it easier to convince the idiot to unwind and get some sleep afterwards. Dean was more than willing to risk a lukewarm shower to help Sam get a full night’s rest.

“Is there any other way I can be of help before tomorrow?” Cas asked as she threw her dirty clothes in her suitcase. She was dressed for sleeping in a flowery T-shirt and bright pink sweatpants raided from Michelle Swanson’s closet, a combination he never would have expected from the person who’d worn the same suit and trench coat for years. It hurt Dean’s brain a little. Cas should have clothes that suited Cas, not her meat suit’s idea of fashion. He added “take Cas shopping” to his list of things to do after this case wrapped up.

“Nah, we’ve got all the background we need. Tomorrow we do the legwork and then we’ll have more things up your alley,” he answered.

Cas sat down across from him at the kitchenette table and started opening her laptop, but he reached over and pushed it closed. “You’re as bad as Sam. You don’t have to be working all the time. Go read your book. What was it, _Frankenstein_?”

“No, I finished that one. Sam suggested that I read something called _Pride and Prejudice_. I’m only about two chapters into it. Have you read it?” she asked.

“I read the Cliff Notes in high school, I think. Or maybe I just stole the class notes from someone. It’s a real chick book. Not my thing at all,” Dean said with a grimace. He grabbed a beer out of the mini-fridge and offered one to her. Cas took it with a nod of thanks.

“Dean, I am, at the moment, ‘a chick.’ If I’m going to spend the rest of my life as a human female, shouldn’t I be at least somewhat familiar with 'chick' things?”

She had a point, he supposed. Dean took a swig of beer put his feet up on the chair next to him. “Most of the books they threw at me in high school just sorta bounced off me – they didn’t seem to have anything to do with my life, ya know? Anyway, I’m more of a movie guy.”

“Yes, you talked last night about all those movies made from the _Frankenstein_ book. I would like to watch one or two of them with you some time, to compare them to the book,” Cas said. “If you’d like,” she added, suddenly self-conscious about asking for something.

“Sure, next time we have some quiet time, I’ll see if I can find one of the good old black and white ones with Karloff.” He liked watching movies with Cas. He’d watch just about anything with her just to see her reactions. It was like watching something for the first time again, plus she always saw things he’d never thought about before. Hell, if she liked it, maybe he’d even see if this _Pride and Prejudice_ thing had been made into a movie. They sat for a while over their beers and talked about the few books that Dean remembered from his haphazard schooling plus the ones he’d read on his own because they’d seemed interesting at the time. He’d never been the reader Sam was, but a good story or a good character that felt real to him would hook him in every time and some of those nerd books actually had good stuff under it all. He suggested a couple of Kurt Vonnegut books because he’d actually read and liked them (not for school, of course, but because Dad had said Vonnegut was his mother’s favorite author). He was really pleased when Cas promised to try one of those next. Sam joined the discussion when he got out of the shower and gave Dean a _look_ that was probably supposed to be mean something, but Dean couldn’t be bothered to ask.


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It's investigation time.

SAM

The Deputy County Coroner on duty was a balding, middle-aged white man with horn-rimmed glasses and a weary, overwhelmed look. Once Dean and Sam flashed their badges, he was more than happy to let FBI Agents Gillan and Blackmore take a look at John Ponca’s body. He never even bothered asking who Cas was or why she was tagging along after two FBI agents, which struck Sam as rude.

By their standards, it was a clean kill. No organs had been ripped out, no bites, no claw marks, nothing eaten or torn away. Just four precise, almost surgical, slices of the carotid and femoral arteries done with something very sharp, and all of the blood drained. By the state of the body, the cuts had been made while the man was still alive. Cas grimaced a little at the smell – something she’d never done before – but set her jaw and leaned right in with Dean and Sam to examine the corpse’s neck and thighs.

“Are vampires usually this fastidious?” Cas asked. “I was under the impression that they preferred to bite victims.”

“Most do, but not all. Some keep a victim alive for a while hooked up to an IV so that they can feed over days. Never seen one do anything like this before, though,” Dean noted.

Sam agreed that there was something unusual about this kill, if it really was a vampire. He consulted the coroner’s preliminary report. One thing jumped out at him immediately. “There’s no sign that this guy was subdued before he was sliced and drained. No rope marks or restraint marks, no bash on the head, no defensive wounds. The tox screen is still out for analysis, so I guess the cops are thinking drugs.”

They checked the body for obvious needle marks and found nothing, but there were all sorts of places the guy could have been injected without leaving a visible trace. “What would make a guy sit there peacefully while his throat and his thighs were sliced and he was drained dry?” Sam mused.

“There are any number of spells –” Cas began.

“Aw, not witches. I don’t wanna deal with witches. I frickin’ hate witches,” Dean complained. 

“Well, it might be demons,” Cas suggested, clearly trying to cheer Dean up. Sam rolled his eyes. Only his brother would be cheered up by the prospect of fighting demons.

The Ponca family lived in an old-fashioned Gothic Revival-style house with a meticulously manicured front lawn. The door knocker was muffled, a very old tradition for a house in mourning, but the doorbell worked just fine. The woman who answered the door matched the picture of John Ponca’s mother on the family website, only more tired and worn. She was wearing black jeans and a black sweater set, no makeup, no jewelry, her short dark hair neat but not styled. 

Sam offered up his most sympathetic expression as he and Dean flashed their badges. “Mrs. Ponca? I’m Agent Gillan, this is my partner Agent Blackmore and our expert consultant, Professor Glover. We’d like to ask you a few questions about your son John’s death.”

The woman drew a deep breath and leaned hard against the front door. “Thank God. At last. Someone listened.”

Sam didn’t want to give the poor woman false hope, particularly if this wasn’t a monster case and the actual FBI eventually took an interest. “We’re just here to do a preliminary assessment of the case, ma’am, to see whether there’s enough here to warrant the Bureau taking action,” he said. As her face fell, Sam realized he needed to say something else to keep her from shutting the door on them. “Can we come in? I’m sure it would be more comfortable for you to talk inside.”

She shook her head, not in negation but to clear it. “Yes, please, come in. I didn’t mean to be rude. I’m Barbara Ponca, John’s mother. My husband Alonso is at work.” 

She ushered them in to the living room. Based on the quality of the leather couches, the lush rug and the handmade artwork on the walls, the Poncas were doing well for themselves. The slate mantle across the top of the fireplace was covered with elaborately-framed family photographs. Sam examined the photos while Dean took a seat across from Mrs. Ponca. Cas spent a few long moments looking uncertain before Dean nodded towards the other end of the couch, encouraging her to sit.

The photos showed the Poncas with their children at various ages. John seemed to be the youngest of four, a happy kid with some kind of musical instrument constantly in his hands. Sam felt the all-too-familiar pang that came from looking at a normal family doing normal things. Mom, Dad, kids playing with their dog, graduating college, the oldest son at his wedding with sister and brothers at his side. He wondered for just a moment what it would be like to have any of this and hated himself a little for still asking that question after all these years.

Meanwhile, Dean had started questioning Barbara Ponca, putting on his best “professional but gentle” demeanor. “We’ve seen the family website, ma’am. What makes you think that your son was the victim of a serial killer?”

Barbara presented as cool and poised, but her grief was simmering just under the surface. Sam knew the signs. The bags under her dark brown eyes. The little chips in her expensive manicure. The way she sat so rigidly that she might shatter if touched.

“I know the Belchamp police think I’m just a hysterical suburban mother with an over-active imagination who’s read too many true crime books. I’m not. It can’t just be a coincidence that John and one of his friends died exactly the same strange way,” Barbara said.

“Wait, John knew one of the other victims?” Sam asked. He exchanged a quick glance with Dean. That certainly hadn’t been in the any of the records he had pried out of the police database last night. How could the cops have missed something that important?

“John and Shawn Nesbitt were friends. They played guitar together sometimes. Shawn was a talented classical guitarist. He played – he played for our oldest son’s wedding. John was absolutely broken up when Shawn was found dead. He was sure something wasn’t right about what happened. I told him – I told John to leave it alone and let the police handle it. But you know how that went.” She interlaced her hands as she talked, clenching them together until her fingers were white, but kept her face as still as a frozen pond. “The police haven’t done anything and now John is dead too, the same way as Shawn, and they still won’t admit they can’t handle it. Shawn’s parents are older, they live in an assisted living facility in New Jersey, and they don’t want to make a fuss. But I am going to fuss, no matter what anyone says.”

This was a lead and a good one. “What do you know about Shawn?” Sam asked.

“I didn’t know him well. I only met him myself at the wedding rehearsal and then at the wedding. I know that John met him about two years ago and they bonded over their music. Shawn kept trying to encourage John to do more performing, but John was really happiest when teaching music. And his students – his students loved him. We’ve gotten so many cards and letters from them.”

She studied her folded hands, clenching them even more tightly, then looked up at Sam and Dean. “Agents, can you do anything to encourage the County to release John’s body so we can have the funeral? People keep asking and we – and – and we all need to have the funeral. We can’t move on without the funeral.”

Sam crossed to sit beside Barbara, close enough to be sympathetic but not close enough to invade her space. It was a delicate balance with witnesses but one he’d walked hundreds of times. “We’ll do what we can. But sometimes even the FBI can’t get local cooperation.” He didn’t want to get her hopes up, especially given that there were already reasons to be suspicious of the local investigation of the murders.

“Thank you, Agent Gillan,” Barbara responded, her cool calm reasserting itself. “What else do you need to know?”

“What can you tell us about John’s routine?” Dean asked.

“He lived here while he saved money for a place of his own, using the basement apartment that used to belong to the servants when this house was first built back in the 1900s. He came and went through his own entrance. He’d leave for work very early, 6 a.m. sometimes. Usually he was tutoring in the afternoon and doing private lessons or practices in the evening, so he might not get back until after 9 p.m. We didn’t really see him much because he was so busy, but he made sure he had dinner with us, his father and me, once a week, on Sundays.” Barbara paused, remembering. “Would it help to see his rooms?”

“Yes, yes it would. But a few more questions first,” Sam responded. “If you don’t mind?”

“Ask what you need to ask,” Barbara assured.

“Did you know any of John’s other friends?” 

“He’d only been back from college for about three years. He went away to school – Oberlin in Ohio. Most of his friends from high school have moved away to bigger towns but he kept in touch with a few. I think I have their names somewhere. He’s made some friends at work. I’ll get those names for you too. No steady girlfriend though. His father and I were worried about that, but he kept telling us not to worry, he’d find someone eventually, he had time. That was our last discussion. The last thing I ever said to him was that I was worried he was working too hard and would end up alone,” Barbara said. She was rambling a little, but they let her, knowing that they often got their best information from unguarded statements.

After a moment, she unclenched her hands and looked at each of them. “Where are my manners? Can I get you anything? Coffee? Tea?”

“Coffee would be lovely, thank you,” Sam answered. They’d come here straight from the morgue and even his stomach was starting to express a desire for food. “Why don’t you show us John’s rooms and we can look around while you make the coffee?”

John had a basement suite that included two bedrooms, a small kitchen, a bathroom and a large living room. It had a separate door to the outside and an interior door to the main house. The whole area was cluttered with the debris of daily life, but the bathroom and kitchen were spotless. Probably a cleaning service, Sam reflected. Even he couldn’t keep a bathroom this clean without help.

“What should I be doing?” Cas asked. 

“Look for anything unusual or weird,” Dean advised. 

Cas frowned with frustration. “How am I supposed to know what’s unusual or weird for people who aren’t hunters?”

Dean sighed. “All right, padawan, come check the bedrooms with me and I’ll try to explain what’s ‘weird’ for the normals.”

In the living room, the coffee table and the side tables were filled with piles of paper – practice reports from students, marked-up musical scores, fliers advertising musical performances, school district paperwork – all interspersed with stray CDs and a thousand different guitar picks. The couch was older, with a sag in the center seat that spoke of regular use. One entire wall of the living room was taken up with shelves various kinds of music in a variety of formats. Like Dean, John was heavily devoted to vinyl, but his musical tastes were far more eclectic. His impressive collection included everything from the most up-to-date modern jazz to classic big band, with just about everything in between. He had a lot of classic blues albums, which immediately put Sam in mind of a demon deal, but no hellhound killed its victim with neat slices to key arteries. John’s CDs were mostly small label presses, some demo recordings, some classical collections. The three CDs nearest to the top of the paper pile on the coffee table were labeled in Sharpie as “Shawn’s New Celtic Stuff.” Sam grabbed those.

The freezer door was covered in fliers and magnets advertising bars. Unlike the ones in the living room, these fliers were all for performances by John himself or by John with Shawn Nesbitt – they called themselves “The Desperate Romantics” – at clubs in Rockford or Elgin or DeKalb. They’d even played in Chicago once, right before Shawn was killed. Sam had the beginning of an idea. Maybe the vamps or whatevers had zeroed in on these two particular guys at one of their performances. 

“Dean, Cas you got anything?” Sam yelled. 

“This guy has some seriously sweet concert tees, but other than that we’ve got – holy crap, will you look at this!” Dean was standing in front of John’s shelves of vinyl records gazing at them like a blessed shrine. “This . . . this is a thing of beauty. He’s got every single ‘Zeppelin album here . . . and ZZ Top . . . Cream . . . B.B. King. . . Derek and the Dominos . . . this is fricking awesome.”

“Do you need me to give you a moment alone with the records?” Sam asked his brother. “Or can we, you know, work the case?”

“Sam,” Dean pleaded.

They all jumped when Barbara Ponca said, “John was very proud of his collection. I’m happy to see someone appreciating them the way he did.” She stood at the interior door between John’s living room and the main house. “The coffee is ready. Or do you need a few more minutes?”

“Just a few more minutes, ma’am, if you don’t mind,” Sam responded, shooting his brother a death glare. Dean might be all but immune to embarrassment, but Sam wasn’t. The last thing a grieving mother needed was to find Dean geeking out over her dead son’s belongings. Barbara nodded, then turned back into the main house.

“We found nothing weird as such,” Cas explained while Dean continued to commune with John’s record collection. “But he did have some books on Irish and Scottish mythology next to his bed with post-it notes stuck in them and scribbled handwriting. I took the books so we could review them for relevance.”

“Huh,” Sam noted. “His buddy Shawn Nesbitt was doing some work in Celtic music. And wait …” He dug through the fliers on the freezer door. Yes, there it was. “They recently did two gigs at a pub in town called the Green Lady.” The flier was all knotwork and fancy Celtic lettering, some of the words in English but some clearly not. “Hey Cas, is this Gaelic?”

Cas stared closely at the flier. “Some of it. But this one symbol something else. Something I can’t read.”

“Wait, I thought you could read all human languages,” Sam asked.

“I can. Either this isn’t a language or it isn’t a human language,” Cas replied.

Barbara hadn’t just made coffee for them. She had put out a spread of mini-quiches, spanakopita, and fresh grapes, all arranged with the meticulous care of someone who entertained a lot. “It’s just some fruit and frozen things that I heated up, but good manners are good manners,” she explained. “You’ve been so kind it was the least that I could do.”

“Thank _you_ ,” Dean answered with enthusiasm, quickly filling a plate. Sam started with some grapes but the smell lured him into trying some of the spanakopita and he was pleased at how good they were. 

They managed to get Barbara to tell more stories about John, as well as the promised lists of his friends. One thing continued to bother Sam. “Did you tell the police that John knew Shawn Nesbitt? That they performed together?” he asked.

“Of course I did,” Barbara replied. “That Detective Drummond didn’t think it mattered.”

That bothered him even more. “Did John ever talk to you about a pub named the Green Lady?” Sam followed up. He slid one of the fliers across the coffee table.

“I’ve heard of the place but I’ve never been. It opened about eight months ago. I didn’t even know that John and Shawn played there.” She ran her fingertips over the flier. “Desperate Romantics. I didn’t know they had a band name. It suited them.”

“Do you mind if we take that with us, along with a few other of John’s things? We’ll bring them back after we write up our reports,” Sam assured.

“Take anything you need.”


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Some more investigation. Some of that promised Destiel content . . .

DEAN

The weird little snacks Barbara Ponca had given them had been tasty but not nearly enough food in Dean’s opinion, so they’d headed for a diner to fuel up properly and figure out their next move. Sam had his head in the book they’d snagged from John Ponca’s bedroom while Cas was staring intensely at four different fliers from the Green Lady pub. 

The waiter, a tall white kid of maybe nineteen who was over-eager to please, glanced at the fliers when he brought them their food. “Green Lady. Cool place,” he volunteered.

“You’ve been there, uh, Josh?” Dean asked, quickly checking the kid's name tag.

“Yeah, a bunch of times. I like the live music and the dancing, even though they are hardasses about checking IDs,” Josh responded. Then, as if suddenly realizing he was talking to three people in suits he hurried to add, “Not that I’d ever try to buy beer with a fake ID, sir.” 

This thing with college-age kids calling him sir was getting old real fast. “Don’t sweat it, kid,” Dean responded. He gave Josh another once-over as the kid finished laying out the food. Tall and still working on filling out that height, with shaggy dark hair and blue eyes, he looked a little bit like Sam at the same age. Just the killer’s type. He wanted to say something – to tell the kid to be careful or stay away from the place – but he couldn’t risk letting whatever was out there know that they were on to its hunting habits. Some days this job sucked. 

“You bookworms find anything interesting?” Dean asked.

Sam had a mouthful of salad so he motioned to Cas to answer first. “There’s one character that keeps appearing in the fliers for the Green Lady that’s not a letter or a word as such. It appears in different places in the design each time.” She pointed to a knotty squiggle that didn’t look that different to Dean from half of the other knotty squiggles that he didn’t understand. “It might be a pictogram rather than a letter. Or a proper name that I’m not familiar with.”

“Or the artist who did the fliers went all Prince on us,” Dean noted.

“Well, I need research time before I can know whether it is meaningful or not,” Cas concluded.

Sam picked up the thread. “John tagged a lot of references to something called a green woman that appears in the lore from Scotland.” He grabbed the book and began reading. “A green lady or _glaistig_ is a spirit that can be either benevolent or malign depending on its mood. She may appear as a beautiful woman or as a half-woman half-goat similar to a faun or satyr, with the goat legs concealed by a flowing green dress. She is often associated with music, and is sometimes said to lure men to their deaths using song or dance.”

“Well that’s not suspicious at all,” Dean remarked sarcastically. “Looks like we’re going pub crawling tonight.”

“Yeah, but we should really talk to the cops first. I don’t like that they seem to have ignored the link between Ponca and Nesbitt,” Sam countered. Dean nodded in agreement.

“Why don’t you drop me off back at the hotel before you go speak to the police so that I can get started on some research?” Cas suggested.

“Cas, you’re never going to learn how to talk to normal people if you don’t actually _talk_ to normal people sometimes,” Dean said.

Cas ducked her eyes and fussed with dumping crackers into her tomato soup. “You’re going to need to lie to the police and you know that I’m not any good at that. I don’t want to make a mess of things for you.”

Dean hated the self-doubt that Cas seemed to be dead-set on carrying around since her resurrection. He wanted his friend back – the one with nerves of steel who dared to call pissed off archangels “assbutt.” He looked to Sam, who was no help. “It makes sense to get a jump on the research work early,” his brother said. “I’ve never even heard of a green woman before – who knows whether it’s a real lead or not. Ponca could have just been interested because of the name of the bar.”

“Fine,” Dean conceded, although not happily. He wasn’t going to let her get out of coming with them to the Green Lady tonight, though. He and Sam could fill her up with all the TV, movies and books in the world, but she was never going to learn how to be human if she didn’t interact with other people.

The Belchamp police were not impressed by their FBI badges. If anything, they were downright hostile. The Belchamp Chief of Police was an older white man with a thick shock of salt and pepper hair who reminded Dean a little bit of the guy who had played the cop in a thousand seasons of _Law & Order_. The Chief barely closed the door to his office before he started bitching at them. “Look here, Agents,” he said with thinly-veiled contempt, “you can’t just come waltzing in here infringing on my jurisdiction unless one of us calls you first and I sure as hell didn’t call you. If you’re here because of that Ponca woman I’m filing a protest with your field office.”

Fortunately, Sam had spent countless hours researching the FBI for moments just like this. “Chief Ramsey, we are not here to step on your toes,” Sam explained in his most respectful voice, the one they’d both first learned to use on Dad when he was in a mood. “We are here because the murders in Belchamp appear to follow a pattern that we’ve also seen in Sioux Falls and Baltimore. If your killings do match the pattern and the profile, then this is an inter-state case and it is FBI business. But, for now, my partner and I are just here to look, make an assessment and write a report.”

Dean picked up the thread. “The more you share with us, the sooner we’ll be out of your hair and then our report is just one more thing on our boss’s desk.”

Chief Ramsey did not invite them to sit down or make themselves comfortable. He stalked around his desk, pushed a pile of papers off of his phone, and then smacked the intercom button. “Desk Sergeant, my office now.” Ramsey crashed to a seat in his plush office chair and glared at Dean and Sam silently for the few minutes it took for the Sergeant to respond. Dean supposed Ramsey was trying to be intimidating, but it was like being glared at by a substitute teacher, and that sort of thing had stopped working on Dean sometime around 5th grade.

The Sergeant turned out to be a solid-looking Korean man with a shaved head and a uniform so crisply-pressed the pleats could have sliced skin. He fairly screamed “ex-military” out of his pores. “Hwang, take these Agents to the conference room, let ‘em see whatever records they want and keep ‘em out of my sight,” Ramsey instructed.

“Sure thing, Chief,” Hwang responded, his voice professionally neutral.

As he escorted them down the hallway, Dean tried to strike up a conversation. “Your boss always so charming to visitors?”

“That’s the Chief for you. He’s not so keen on the Bureau,” Hwang answered with a shrug. He unlocked and opened the door to a clean but small windowless room filled with the very best industrial office furniture money could buy. “What files can I get for you?” he asked. 

“We’d like to see current investigation files on the Boddicker, Stupak, Nesbitt and Ponca homicides, please. It would also be helpful to talk to Detective Drummond,” Sam asked.

Hwang responded with a brusque laugh. “No wonder you put a knot in the Chief’s knickers. He hates those cases. Have a seat then, and I’ll bring you what we’ve got. Boddicker is mostly being handled by the Elgin police, though we’ve got some things. Detective Drummond is the lead on the other three. He’s out in the field now. I’ll send him to you when he’s back.”

The hard copy files didn’t tell them much that Sam hadn’t already been able to pry out on line. The notes from the interview of Stefanie Zielinski, Stupak’s live-in girlfriend, were a little more detailed but they didn’t contain any of the things that really interested Dean and Sam, such as whether Stupak and his girlfriend were regulars at the Green Lady or had any other similar habits as the other victims. Nothing in the files of the Ponca or Nesbitt investigations indicated the two men knew each other at all, much less played music together on a regular enough basis to have a band name. The only really useful things were the crime scene photographs and the autopsy reports. They showed the same clean, precise slices of arteries, the same lack of bruising or other evidence of struggle. All the damage to the body had been after death, probably during the disposal process. The final autopsy reports included tox screens that showed no signs of drugs or sedatives. 

Sam’s jaw clenched tighter and tighter as he read over the records, noting the gaps and lack of follow up. “This is some seriously incompetent police work,” Sam grumbled. “Or someone’s trying to hide something.”

“No kidding. I wanna hear how this Drummond guy explains this mess,” Dean agreed. Personally, he was sure Drummond or someone paying him was trying to hide something. It might be related to their monster or it might just be garden-variety corruption, but nobody left these sorts of holes in a murder investigation by accident. “Let’s see when this dickbag is expected back.”

Sergeant Hwang was professional and apologetic, but he couldn’t say when Detective Drummond would be back in the station. The last thing Dean and Sam wanted to do was sit around an unfriendly cop shop for a couple of hours – too much chance that someone would realize they looked like those two guys who robbed a bunch of banks and then supposedly died in Iowa. So Sam left Agent Gillan’s card and they headed out to Rock Valley College to see if Matthew Stupak’s girlfriend was out of class yet.

When he’d read in the files that Stefanie Zielinski taught college math, Dean hadn’t expected a petite, curvy, white brunette with a sweet face and round wire-rimmed “sexy librarian” glasses. He’d have paid a lot more attention in math if any of his math teachers had looked like her. Her office was barely bigger than the Impala. Fortunately, the other professor who shared the space immediately cleared out as soon as the brothers said “FBI,” leaving them enough room to have a very cramped, but private, conversation. Stefanie started weeping softly before they even finished the first question. “We were getting married,” she said, pressing a rumpled embroidered handkerchief to her face between her words. “We were supposed to get married over next year's winter break.”

“We’re very sorry for your loss,” Sam responded. “Are you able to answer just a few questions now? It would be a great help to us.”

Stefanie nodded through her tears. Dean pulled out photographs of John Ponca, Shawn Nesbitt and David Boddicker. “Did you or your fiancé know any of these men?”

She studied the photographs closely, both with and without her glasses, then shook her head. “No, I’m sorry. They’re not familiar at all.” She pointed at Boddicker. “He looks a little like my first boyfriend. I’d have remembered meeting someone out here who looked like that.”

“How about a pub in Belchamp called The Green Lady? Did you two ever go there?” Sam asked.

Again, she was thoughtful and took her time. “No, I’m sorry, that doesn’t ring any bells at all.” She pulled off her glasses and wiped the tear streaks from the lenses. “Wait . . . a few months ago, Matt joined a darts league. They played out of a pub in Belchamp but I don’t remember which one. I never went with him because I teach a late class on the night they play.”

“Did Matt start taking any interest in anything Irish or Scottish? Music, maybe?” Sam asked.

Stefanie looked confused but answered the question anyway. “Uh, no? Why would he? Our families are Russian and Ukrainian, no Irish.”

“Recently, any unusual behavior of any kind?” Dean followed up.

She teetered on the edge of crying again, but inhaled deeply and steadied herself. “We were both working as much overtime as possible to earn extra money for the wedding and the honeymoon. We barely saw each other the last three months.” 

They asked a few other follow up questions, but Stefanie hadn’t noticed much unusual about Matt or around the house. She’d been focused on work and wedding planning. Although she was making heroic efforts to keep control, she was getting more and more upset with each question. Dean felt a little guilty about stirring up her grief and he could tell Sam was feeling the same. In the end, after fifteen minutes of questions and increasing amounts of tears between her careful answers, they thanked her, shook hands and headed out.

Just as Dean stepped into the hallway, Stefanie called out, “Wait! Matt’s friend, Alex, played in the same darts league. He’d know exactly where they played.” She scribbled a name and phone number on a Post-It note and handed it to Dean. “Alex Waddington. Call him.”

They were not surprised at all when Alex Waddington confirmed that he and Matt Stupak had played darts at the Green Lady in Belchamp every week for the last five months. With no word from Detective Drummond, Dean and Sam returned to the hotel to see what Cas had dug up.

Cas was deep down the internet rabbit hole, pages of meticulous notes on a legal pad showing that she’d been at it for a while. She'd even remembered to take her notes in English this time. She was still wearing her fake FBI pantsuit and the trench coat, probably because she seemed to love that damn thing, but Dean also noted that the room was downright cold. He checked the thermostat by the door, which read a perfectly reasonable 68 degrees. No way in hell this room was 68 degrees.

“Hey, did you have the AC on? It’s arctic in here,” Dean asked. This was the second or third time they’d come back to a freezing room in the last few months. Despite himself, Dean still held on to a stupid, tiny little bit of hope that it really was Bobby haunting them. Sam, already paging through Cas’s notes, shot him a _look_ because they’d argued about Dean’s hope more than once before and Sam wasn’t willing to indulge in even that much.

“I didn’t touch the temperature,” Cas responded. “I just sat down and got to work.”

“And you didn’t notice that it was nearly cold enough in here to see your breath? We gotta work on your hunter instincts, Cas,” Dean chided.

“No, I didn't notice," Cas admitted.

She may not have paid attention, but her hands were shivering whenever she paused her typing. Dean couldn’t hold in a sigh of frustration. “We talked about this. You gotta listen to the meat suit when it tells you things like it’s cold or it’s hungry or it’s tired.” 

“Wow, there’s a lot of stuff out there on green women,” Sam noted, drawing them all back to the problem of the case. “I mean, a lot of this is Victorian-era and probably nonsense, but I never would have found half of this stuff in so little time.”

“Well, it helps to be able to read the original languages,” she answered. “I’m still downloading some better images of a couple of Pictish carved stones from an excavation in Scotland, but I’ve got enough here to confirm that yes, a _glaistig_ or green woman is not just a story humans made up. There’s several different types of Fairies that were referred to as “green women.” Some of them benevolent, some of them evil, but most of them somewhere in between, just like humans.”

“Son of bitch, Fairies?” Dean did not like the idea of dealing with Fairies again.[1] They were nearly as awful as witches, and way more handsy.

“Your notes say they can look like normal people. Is there any way to detect a green lady?” Sam asked.

“Well, Dean should be able to detect her because he’s been to Faerie, but in case that doesn’t work, she should be sensitive to iron, silver, certain herbs, the wood and berries of the rowan or the mountain ash tree, and maybe church bells,” Cas answered. “Although that last one is probably just folklore.”

“What herbs?” Sam inquired.

“Clover, Saint John’s wort, and red verbena.”

Sam nodded. “I’ve got a ton of Saint John’s wort. I’ve been using it for the last few weeks to deal with the hallucinations from the Cage.”

“If the lore’s correct, it may make you immune to Fairy glamour. It will certainly make you less than attractive to them,” Cas agreed. “It might even make you toxic to a Fairy, although I’m not sure that inviting one to try to consume you is our best strategy,” she added dryly, with a side-eye at Dean.[2]

“Hey it worked, didn’t it?” Dean replied with a shrug. “So how’s this sound? -We head out to the Green Lady, which we know is her hunting ground, and check out the folks in the bar until we find our Fairy.” Sam and Cas made noises of agreement and Dean grinned a little. An excuse to sit in a bar with good beer and maybe some pool? This hunt might not be so bad even if it did involve Fairies. He strolled into the bedroom, dropped his suit jacket and onto his bed and began pulling off his tie. 

While he dressed, Sam and Cas continued to pore over notes and lore. “Okay, assuming we can find this green lady, how do we take her out?” Sam asked.

“I have a few ideas. That Gaelic dismissal ritual you used on the leprechaun might work again, assuming the green lady was summoned here. Silver will work against members of the Unseelie Court, but we can’t be sure that applies to this particular green lady. Cold iron bullets should work. In a worst case scenario, I know angel blades are effective against Fairies when wielded by an angel, and possibly when wielded by a human as well,” Cas answered.

“This is really solid work, Cas,” Sam praised.

“It’s nothing that you or Dean wouldn’t have found if you looked for it.” 

“Suck it up, Cas, and take the compliment!” Dean yelled as he pulled his favorite Black Sabbath T-shirt over his head. Knowing that this shirt was snug across his shoulders in a way that caught women’s eyes, he left his usual flannel shirt on the bed. This Fairy chick liked to prey on good looking guys with brown hair who liked music? Well, then, he’d advertise his love of music and stick himself out there as bait before his doofus brother decided to do the same thing. 

When Dean finished changing, the dynamic nerd duo was still focused on the lap top screen, staring at a high-res image of some sort of carved stone. He looked at the image from at least three angles but it was all gibberish to him. “Gimme the meathead muscle version of what we’re lookin’ at,” Dean asked, pulling up a chair.

“Dean, you’re not –“ Cas began with a sigh.

“Don’t try to tell Dean that he’s smart, it offends him,” Sam snarked. 

“It’s that stone from Scotland I was talking about. It has some of the most specific references to dealings with _glaistig_ and making bargains with them. It might confirm for us how to banish or kill this one,” Cas explained. “Now that I have this image, I’ll stay here tonight and continue to research while you two go out to the Green Lady –“

“No,” Sam and Dean said together. Dean was honestly surprised that Sam was agreeing with him, but he’d take it. “You need to get out and interact with people who aren’t just me and Sam,” Dean added.

Sam followed up before Cas could object. “You can’t keep hiding from the world because you feel guilty. I tried. It doesn’t help.”

Cas knew when she was outflanked. “Fine,” she said, clearly not at all fine with the decision being made for her. 

“Get outta your monkey suits, you two. This Green Lady place serves food. We can get dinner there while we check for Fairies.”

Sam went into the bedroom to change, but Cas folded her arms across her chest and made a face Dean would have called a pout on anyone who wasn’t a former Angel of the Lord. “I like these clothes. Why do I need to change them?” 

“Because we’re going undercover at a pub and you’re dressed like an FBI nerd. You’ll stand out,” Dean said. “You don’t want to give us away to what we’re hunting.”

“Fine. What do humans who definitely aren’t hunting homicidal Fairies wear?”

Cas had packed a weird assortment of Michelle’s clothes, but Dean managed to put together an outfit that didn’t seem out of line for a young woman out for a night of fun with her friends: close-fitting long-sleeved blue T-shirt patterned in darker blues, jeans and a pair of striped sneakers. And the trench coat. She wasn’t budging on the trench coat. “It’s the only thing left in my life that feels like _me_ ,” she insisted with puppy dog eyes that she must have picked up from Sam. He gave in because he had to admit that he had no idea what he’d do if he woke up tomorrow as Deanna instead of Dean, much less waking up as a human after centuries as a celestial being.

While she was changing, Sam came out of the bedroom. He’d clearly had the same “bait” idea that Dean did because he was wearing one of his nicer button-down shirts over his newest and cleanest jeans. He glanced at Dean, then glanced at Cas’s clothes spread out all over the couch, then back at Dean. “Hey, ya know, if you’d rather go out with just Cas tonight, I don’t mind staying and getting some research done,” Sam said, so deliberately casual that his casualness nearly smacked Dean in the face. “You two can do reconnaissance just fine without me. I don’t wanna get in the way.”

Dean was so incredibly done with his brother’s hints and winks about him and Cas. “You need to stop that shit right now,” he said, the growl in his voice making clear that this was not an idle or teasing threat. 

Sam shook his head. “I dunno, Dean, I think you and Cas have something –“

“Cas is a friend, one of the very very few friends we’ve got left, in case you haven’t noticed. I am _not_ going to do anything that might fuck up that friendship. Why is that so goddamn hard to understand?” Dean insisted, trying to keep his voice down because the last thing he wanted was Cas herself getting in the middle of this particular conversation.

Sam raised his hands in a gesture of reluctant surrender just in time for Cas to emerge from the bathroom. She looked great, Dean thought. The jeans hugged her in all the right places, the shirt made her eyes even bluer, and her long hair was released from its braid, lying loose and wavy halfway down her back, making him wonder how all that soft hair would feel splayed over his chest. So yeah, he stared a little, but she was stare-worthy.

Sam cleared his throat. His face spelled out ‘tell me again how you’re not totally into Cas’ so clearly it was almost audible. Dean pointed an angry finger at his brother. “Sammy, you're gonna do that thing, where you just shut the hell up, got it?” He grabbed the car keys and headed for the door before anyone could say another word.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [1] 6.09 Clap Your Hands If You Believe...
> 
> [2] Referring, of course, to Dean's plan for defeating the Mother of All in 6.19 Mommy Dearest


	5. Chapter 5

DEAN

The Green Lady was in housed a big building that had probably once been a mill of some kind, all old brick and tall windows, decorated now with clever paintings of Celtic knotwork around the window and door frames. The first thing Dean noticed when they stepped inside was the aroma of burgers and beer, a combination near and dear to his heart. The second thing he noticed was that the sound system was playing Led Zeppelin’s _Bron-Y-Aur Stomp_ , not something awful with bagpipes as he’d secretly feared whenever Sam talked about “Celtic music.” But all that good feeling vanished immediately when he looked around and realized how many people in the bar had the tell-tale glow of Fairy about them. “Son of a bitch,” he swore under his breath.

“You see it too?” Sam asked nervously, eyes darting around, assessing threats.

“Dean, Sam, more than half these people are Fairies of some kind.” Cas sounded strangely unnerved, but Dean didn’t have time for that right now.

“Yeah, way to state the obvious there, Cas.” Dean wondered if they could back out slowly without drawing attention. No such luck. A waitress, light sparkling around her like she was right out of goddamn _Twilight_ , had already noticed them.

“You folks here for food or just drinks tonight?” she asked. She was gorgeous. Tall and willowy, black hair down to her ass, wide-set gray eyes and skin so pale white that Dean wondered if she’d ever seen the sun in her life. 

No retreating now. “Uh, food and beer. Table for three,” Dean replied. Sam immediately fell into playing along. Cas looked vaguely freaked out but followed his lead without question.

The waitress led them to table. The sway in her hips should have had Dean horny as hell but instead made him feel dirty in a bad way, like a thousand ants were crawling over his skin. He sat down, taking the chair that put his back to the wall, Cas and Sam flanking him, and tried not to flinch as he took the menus from the Fairy waitress’s hands. “I’m Fenella and I’ll be serving you tonight,” she said with a wink at Dean. “Take a look at the menus and I’ll be back in a trice for your drink orders.”

As she strutted away, Sam leaned in and whispered, “I’m not hallucinating this, right? We’re in a bar full of Fairies?”

“You’re not hallucinating,” Dean agreed. “I see ‘em. Cas sees ‘em too.”

“I shouldn’t be able to do this, I shouldn’t be able to see this way, not without my grace, not as a human,” Cas insisted nervously. 

“Table that for later, pal. This is might be a creepy Fairy bar, but it’s still the green chick’s most likely hunting ground. Right now, we stick with Plan A. We eat some burgers, we drink some beers, we take a look around,” Dean insisted, as much to himself as to Cas and Sam.

When Fenella came back, they ordered three flights of the house craft beers. If not for the Fairies, Dean reflected, this place would be pretty awesome. They were serious about their booze and they had cheeseburgers infused with Guinness stout. He ordered one of those with extra fries covered in cheese sauce and bacon bits. Sam muttered something about cholesterol but Dean ignored him. As if he’d live long enough to die from heart disease.

Dean looked around more closely as they waited for their meals. There were fewer Fairies here than it had seemed on first glance but still more than he’d ever seen in one place. Most of them were clustered around the bar. Trying to separate them was like trying to pick out one light on a Christmas tree from across a football field. “You notice whether anyone is sparkling more than anyone else?” he asked.

“Our waitress seems to have a pretty strong light, and I could definitely see how she could lure a guy to do pretty much anything she wanted,” Sam noted.

Dean started to make a smart ass remark about Sammy having gone too long without sex, but the idea that Fenella was seducing and draining men of their blood didn’t seem all that impossible. Fortunately, for whatever reason, he seemed to be immune to her substantial charms. “Well, she seems to like me, so let’s see what I can get out of her.”

“Dude, I hate to boost your ego, but a woman wanting to jump your bones isn’t exactly proof she’s a murderous Fairy,” Sam disagreed.

“I don’t like using you as bait, Dean,” Cas added. 

“Fine, fine. We’ll stick with the plan for tonight and just look around. But honestly, isn’t it better if the green lady comes after me or Sam than after someone who can’t defend himself?” As much as they wanted to, Sam and Cas couldn’t argue with that. When Fenella came back with their meals, Dean tried striking up a conversation. “Hey there, I heard you have live music here sometimes,” he asked.

“Not on Tuesdays. But we will have a DJ later tonight to play some tunes for dancing. If you’ll be sticking around.”

“My brother and I would love to save you a dance or two,” Dean answered, forcing himself to slap on his flirting smile. 

“Yeah, we’d love to.” Sam seemed to have no problem flirting with her, apparently not feeling the same creepy vibes off the chick that were making Dean’s skin crawl.

“Well, then, dancing starts at nine and I’ll keep room for two on my dance card,” Fenella said. She shot a glance at Cas. “Or should that be three?”

“No,” Cas responded, sounding as dry and unamused as back in the days of the stick-up-the-ass Angel of the Lord who had never even had a rebellious thought. Once Fenella was safely out of earshot, Cas glared at both of them. “You two have a truly appalling disregard for your own safety,” she said.

“It’s just a dance. Even if this is a creepy ass Fairy bar, I doubt she guts people in the middle of the dance floor,” Dean assured her. 

The burger smelled glorious and tasted even better, so he dug in and gave it the attention it deserved. Cas, though, couldn’t be distracted by something as merely human as good food. “I don’t think it’s plausible that all of these Fairies are summoned. There are places where the walls between worlds are thin – in those places, all it takes is a little bit of the right kind of nudge and something from the Fairy reality can walk right through to this one. There must be one of those places nearby. It may be that we can’t simply deal with the one Fairy that’s killing people. We may need to deal with the breach between the worlds as well, otherwise eldritch creatures will keep coming through,” Cas said.

“Any idea how the hell we do that?” Sam asked. He was a little spooked by the whole idea and Dean didn’t blame him a bit. Dean was more than a little spooked himself at the prospect of a wide open door into Fairyland. With Leviathans already running around, the last thing the world needed was another whole troop of grabby, supernatural assholes who looked on humans as toys or food.

“Not yet,” Cas replied.

Sam and Cas dived into an in-depth discussion of quantum equations and the nature of parallel realities, so Dean let them have their nerd moment while he had his burger moment. When he finished, throwing his napkins into a pile on his empty plate, he stood. “I’m gonna go hit the head. Order a pitcher while I’m gone.”

The walk to and from the men’s room was an excuse to take a good look around. He found the board that advertised the various musical acts coming to the bar that week, the area where a group was lining up to play darts, and, yep, right where he thought it would be, a pool table. Perfect. He hadn’t played pool without having to worry about earning money off of it in way too long.

Back at their table there was a new pitcher of pale ale and someone had cleared their plates. The dessert menu had four different kinds of pie, and to Dean’s unashamed delight, Fenella brought him a slab of cherry pie that would have fed a small army. Cas was curious to try a new food, so Dean carved off a portion of the slab to share with her, earning him another meaningful _look_ from Sam that he chose to ignore.

After the pie, the three of them sat for a while enjoying the beer and rambling conversation, still keeping half an eye on the growing crowd of people (and even more Fairies) populating the pub. Whenever no one else was within earshot, they started throwing around ideas about how to pick out one particular Fairy from so many, but kept coming up empty. So they waited and watched, paying attention to which Fairy women paid the most attention to humans. Problem was, other than Fenella and one or two of the men, most of the Fairies kept to themselves, clumping together around the bar in small groups of their own kind. Dean was just about to suggest that they move to the pool table and try to stir up some attention when he noticed that Sam had a deep frown line etched between his eyebrows and was pressing his thumb into the scar on his hand. He knew what that meant. “All right, let’s bail. We’ll try again tomorrow night,” Dean said.

“What? No,” Sam insisted. “I’m fine.” Dean didn’t have to say anything. Instead, he used the big brother glare that had wrung confessions out of Sam since he’d learned to talk. “Okay, I’m not fine,” Sam amended.

“So we’ll go. Hit this place again tomorrow night, maybe with some more lore under our belts,” Dean said.

“No, you and Cas should stay. Talk to people. See what you can learn. See if you can attract the green lady’s attention. I’ll take a cab back to the hotel,” Sam suggested.

“Sam,” Dean protested. If this was another “you and Cas should hook up” hint, he was going to punch his brother, regardless of his broken head.

“Look, I heard you before loud and clear. It’s not that. Stay. Do the job. I’ll go back to the hotel, take a sleeping pill and starting looking for ideas on how we close passages to Fairyland while I wait for it to kick in,” Sam promised.

They bickered for a few more minutes but, in the end, Dean agreed to let Sam go back and get some rest while he and Cas stayed to see what they could find out. It went against all his most protective instincts, but he couldn’t find a reason not to let Sam go, other than stupid stubbornness. 

“What now?” Cas asked. 

Dean exhaled his frustration with this whole goddamn mess. Time to saddle up and work the case. “We need to mingle a little. Let’s go play some pool.” He stood up, took off his jacket and hung it on one of the pegs on the wall near their table. “Coat, Cas.”

“But …”

“Blending in, remember. No one wears a trench coat to shoot pool,” he insisted.

“Fine.” That grumpy tone from Cas shouldn’t amuse him nearly as much as it did.

There was a pair already at the table, but while they finished their game, Dean took the time to explain the basics to Cas. She painstakingly studied the table, the players, and the shots. “It’s all geometry and physics,” Cas observed.

“Pretty much,” Dean agreed. Sam was always saying the same thing, so he assumed it was true. To Dean, pool was just pool. He couldn’t remember a time when he couldn’t play it.

Cas got the hang of the game pretty quick. With practice, she might even be pretty good. He knew he should be trying to talk to people, but it was hard not to get caught up in the rhythm of playing and the stupid happy feeling he got from watching Cas. He liked the way she’d smile whenever she’d line up and land a shot, as if she was actually enjoying herself and not just going along with something he wanted to do. No one else came for the table, so they played another game, then another. If not for needing to keep half an eye on the Fairies who moved and mingled now among the growing crowds, he was having more fun than he’d had in months.

Somewhere in the middle of the third game, Dean began to notice the way Cas’s shirt rode up as she bent over the pool table, revealing just enough skin to be intriguing and reminding him how nicely those jeans hugged her ass. He should have let her keep the damn trench coat on, he thought. Not that the trench coat had ever stopped him from thinking things about Cas that he knew damn well he shouldn’t. The trench coat and that sloppy tie . . .

Time to walk away, get these thoughts out of his head. “Cas, I’m going to go grab a beer, you want anything?”

“Some more of that amber beer, please?”

The bartender was a young white woman with brilliant red hair, a couple of eyebrow rings and mismatched eyes. He didn’t even try to see if she had the spark of Fairy about her, just ordered the beers and tried to think pure thoughts. Powerless or not, Cas was still an angel. Thousands – millions? – of years older than him. How could she ever be interested in him, an ordinary human? More importantly, Cas was his best friend. You don’t fuck your best friend if you want to keep your best friend, he reminded himself. After even just three weeks of having Cas around all the time, he knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that he wanted Cas to stay around more than anything he’d wanted in a long time.

By the time the bartender set their drinks on the bar, he’d talked himself back down to a place where he could look at Cas again without doing or saying something stupid. He wove his way through the crowd back to the pool table, carefully managing not to spill any of the excellent beer. A crowd was gathering there too. Cas had waited for him, not even finishing her own turn until he came back. “This’ll be our last game, place is filling up and we should clear the table for other people,” he said as he set their glasses on a side table.

Dean turned around just in time to see a sloppy drunk white man with the shaggy, smug look of a college frat boy slap Cas on the ass while she was setting up a shot. “Get a move on, honey buns, we’re waitin’ ta play,” the guy slurred.

Looking back on it later, Dean didn’t even remember moving. The next thing he knew, he had the drunken asshole’s face smashed flat against the pool table with one hand while the other hand pressed the arm that had slapped Cas up behind the guy’s back in a wickedly simple hold that would let him dislocate the shoulder with only a little more pressure in the right places. “You were rude to the lady. You need to apologize,” Dean growled.

“Hey, she hangs that sweet ass out there, it’s gonna get slapped,” the drunken asshole protested, as if that were some kind of excuse.

“Not the right answer, douchebag.” He wasn’t angry – he was in that cold, calm headspace that he slipped into when hunting. This drunken asshole was just a monster of a different kind. “So, are you going to apologize, or am I going to bust up your arm? It’s up to you.” Some of the guy’s friends started making noises about coming to their buddy’s rescue, but Dean stopped them with the same glower he generally reserved for things that ate people. “Don’t make me kick your asses too. This is a nice place and I don’t wanna make a mess.”

With that weird almost-humor of hers, Cas added, “My friend has had a very vexing day and hitting someone does tend to make him feel better.”

Dean bounced the drunken asshole’s head against the pool table again for emphasis. “Apology or E.R.? What’s it gonna be?”

“I’m sorry! I’m sorry! I’m sorry! I didn’t know she was your girlfriend!”

“Exactly how stupid are you? Don’t apologize to me, apologize to the lady. She’s the one you disrespected,” Dean said, pushing a little on the asshole’s arm so he could feel the burn of his own straining muscles.

Under the pressure of Dean’s hands, the asshole was starting to snivel like the boy he still was. “I’m sorry! I’m sorry!” 

“And you’re never going to do this to another woman again, no matter how sloppy stupid drunk you get, are you?”

“No, no sir!”

“You got that right.” With a grunt of disgust, Dean pulled him off the pool table and threw him at his friends. “I don’t want to see you douchebags in here again, do you understand me?”

“Yes sir!” The most sober one of the group pulled the drunken asshole to his feet and the whole group made fast tracks for the door. The small knot of people that had gathered around the pool table broke into applause. Dean grabbed the beers off the side table and handed Cas her glass. “I’m sick of pool, let’s go sit at the bar,” he said. The crowd parted around him as he stalked away, Cas trailing in his wake.

She let him drink his entire beer in peace. But the silence was awkward and he needed to fill it with something. “Well, so much for blending in.”

“You certainly made an impression,” Cas responded. Silence again, awkward and restless. This time it was Cas who broke it. “I’m sorry, Dean. I didn’t know how to handle that and that we nearly got into a fight because I didn’t know what to do.”

He kind of loved that she said “we.” He had no doubt that if he did have to throw down in a stupid bar fight tonight, Cas would have been right there backing him up, and for some reason that made him happy. “ _You_ didn’t do anything wrong. He was a drunken asshole who deserved what he got. And besides, me in a fight against half a dozen or so drunk college boys? I’d barely break a sweat.”

“Still.” Cas swirled the dregs of beer in her glass, looking thoughtful. “I thought of so many things I should do in that moment and then realized that in this body, being this way, I couldn’t actually do any of them. I’m not of much use at all.”

“Cas –“ he protested.

“I need to learn how to fight all over again. No grace, just flesh and muscle and bone. Will you teach me?” Cas asked, all earnestness and endearing awkwardness.

“You don’t have to, you know. You could stick with the research and still be a huge help on hunts,” he noted, giving her the choice that he’d never been given.

“I suppose I could. But I want to learn to fight, Dean. I’ve been a warrior my entire existence. It’s what I am. I’m not entirely right without it.” 

“Sure then. When we get back to Minnesota, we start real hunter training. Get you in shape to learn how to fight.”

That made her smile again. In the soft light of the bar, Cas’s eyes were the same color as his favorite pair of jeans. Dean knew he was doing that thing again where he let himself fall into the endless depths of those eyes, but he didn’t much care right now. Sam wasn’t here to give him grief and Cas never seemed to complain about it. In fact, he sometimes wondered exactly what was going through Cas's head at moments like this. 

He hadn’t noticed that the music had grown louder or that people had gotten out onto the floor to dance. Instead, what brought him back to the world was the light touch on his arm and the squirmy feeling like ants on his skin. Fenella was there at his side, fingers brushing his arm, smiling in a predatory way that made his stomach lurch. “Hey, there, handsome. You and your brother promised me a dance,” she said.

“Well, my brother went home with a headache, so you’ve just got me. Hope I’m enough,” he answered, flirting by rote, trying to suppress his shudder at the thought of touching her.

“Oh, more than enough.” She shot a cold, appraising glance at Cas. “You don’t mind if I steal him?”

“How can you steal him? Dean belongs to himself,” Cas answered with a confused tilt of her head. 

The DJ was playing _Wild Horses_ by the Rolling Stones, a decent enough song for a basic slow dance, the kind of thing he’d taught himself to do years ago because women really dug guys who were willing to dance with them. Dean took Fenella’s hand and slid his other hand around to the small of her back. Her hand on his shoulder made him itchy. This Fairy chick was going to be really unhappy when she realized that this prey fought back. “This is a nice place,” he said. “I had some buddies who came here, recommended it to me. You ever meet John Ponca and Shawn Nesbitt? They played gigs here a couple times. Pretty amazing guitar players.” 

“Oh, I never pay attention to the musicians,” Fenella answered with a sly smile. “I like men who know how to dance.”

“Yeah? You ever dance with a buddy of mine named Matt Stupak?”

“Matt? He was never interested in dancing, only his silly game.”

“His loss,” Dean replied.

“I bet you really know how to dance. The best dance, the oldest dance,” Fenella purred, turning the flirtation, and the itchy feeling where her hands touched him, up to eleven. 

It had no effect on him at all. “Sorry, darlin’, this is the only dance I’m offering tonight.”

“You can bring your girlfriend, she’s a pretty little thing even if she’s cold as ice.”

“Still a no, sorry,” Dean answered.

Fenella’s pout wasn’t pretty at all. But the itchy feeling on his shoulder went away and the vague nausea in his stomach settled. “You can’t blame a girl for trying,” she said.

“Oh, I think you were doing a little more than just trying, weren’t you? Throwing a little glamour into the mix, maybe?” Dean asked, dropping the pretend flirtation and reverting to pure hunter.

“Aren’t you the clever one? And so stalwart. She’s a lucky one, your girlfriend,” Fenella said with a glance over her shoulder at Cas.

Dean was sick and tired of this conversation. “So what kind of Fairy are you exactly?”

“You know my people?” she asked, trying for innocence and missing it by a mile.

“I’ve known a few. Killed a few too.” He was done with giving away more than he was getting from her. 

“Oh, there’s no need for that, my lovely hunter. I’m a mere _Leannan Sìth_.”

“A lemon slush?” he asked, trying to make sense of the jumble of syllables she’d spat out.

Her laughter had a cruel edge to it. “Maybe not so clever at that. A _Leannan Sìth_. A Fairy lover who can give you a thousand delights.”

“And when you’re done with your lovers? What then? Slice them up and take their blood?” Dean demanded, tightening his grip on her hand to remind her that he was both bigger and stronger than she was, no matter what kind of Fairy bullshit she might be able to throw around.

“Me? No. I’m a lover not a killer. I’ll take their energy, drain them until they’re nearly dry, but I’ll always leave enough to get them up out of bed the next morning and able come back another night. No man’s ever died of my embrace. No woman either. And they always come back for more” Fenella answered with a certain pride.

“So why are men turning up dead? Men who visit this bar,” Dean asked.

She looked him in the eye now, plainly, frankly, dropping the Fairy glamour for just a moment. Dean thought she was still lovely without all that. Her large gray eyes were wary and sad. “That’s not a thing you should be asking. I’d hate to see a beautiful lad like you end up bloodless under a cairn by the river. Go home, hunter, and leave it be,” she answered.


	6. Chapter 6

CASTIEL

“You’re a pretty understanding girlfriend, letting him dance with Fenella like that when she’s trying so hard to get into his pants.” Castiel was surprised by an unfamiliar voice next to her ear. She turned around to see a female bartender leaning across the bar and smiling at her. The bartender was painfully young with short, curly, red hair, several gold rings in her right eyebrow and an ample sprinkling of freckles across her pale skin. One of her eyes was blue and the other was green, a rare and fascinating mutation in the human genome, but not something associated with any monstrous creature that Castiel could recall. Yet, the bartender did have the slightest gleam of power about her, a bare whisper compared to Fenella’s more intense Fairy aura.

“Excuse me?”

“Your boyfriend? The smokin’ hot guy you came in with? Had dinner with?” the bartender replied. “The guy who nearly took the head off the asshole who smacked your ass at the pool table?”

“Oh, you mean Dean,” Castiel responded. The bartender was misunderstanding the situation, something with which Castiel immediately sympathized. “He’s male, and he is my friend, but if you’re using the romantic sense of the term, then no, he’s not my boyfriend.”

The bartender arched the eyebrow with the rings. “Yeah, sure, right,” she said in that way humans had of saying one thing when they clearly meant the opposite. Castiel was deeply confused but she didn’t want to rebuff the bartender’s apparent friendliness. Not when the specific reason they were at this pub tonight was to talk to people and get information. “My name’s Maisie,” the woman volunteered.

“Casti – uh, just call me Cas.”

“Pleased to meet you, Cas.” Maisie extended a hand. Castiel recognize the gesture now – she was looking for a handshake. She grasped Maisie’s extended hand firmly but the bartender yelped and immediately pulled her hand back. 

“Holy shit! What _are_ you?” Maisie gasped. Her mismatched eyes had been friendly a moment ago but now showed tangible fear. “When I saw you, I thought you were like me but you’re not – what the hell are you?!” Then, more quietly, terror distinct in her face and voice, she asked, “Are you a demon?”

“Fallen angel,” Castiel responded, then instantly regretted it. Dean had been quite insistent that she shouldn’t tell the truth to random people. But this young woman had already seen something and it would be worse to let her assume things.

Maisie startled, frank curiosity seeming to win over fear. “Isn’t that the same thing?”

“No, not all. It’s … well, it’s complicated.”

“Shit, I bet,” Maisie responded. “You’re not gonna – you’re not gonna, like, smite us with God’s wrath or anything?”

Castiel didn’t bother saying that she didn’t have the ability to smite a gnat right now. Instead, she thought about what Dean would say, and tried out a smile and a flippant response. “Not planning on it. I like the beer here.”

That seemed to have the desired effect. Maisie laughed and the fear retreated from her eyes a little. “Then I’ll keep bringing you drinks so you stay happy,” the bartender replied. 

No one seemed to be paying much attention to their conversation, but in an excess of caution Castiel leaned a little over the bar to be able to talk to Maisie more quietly. “How did you know?” Castiel asked. 

“I have a touch of the True Sight,” Maisie answered, taking a quick glance around. “It’s not much, just knowing when someone’s lying to me and reading people’s auras. I saw that you had a spark, figured you were just another part Fairy. But when I touched your hand – it was all wings and blue-white fire and eyes and . . . like, wow.”

“You’re fortunate. The true forms of angels can be overwhelming to mortals.” Castiel couldn’t help remembering Pamela, the psychic who’d forced her to reveal herself before she was safely settled in a vessel, the first human hurt by her miscalculations. She shoved those memories aside for now and focused on the case. It was what Dean and Sam would do. “So you know that this bar is full of Fairies, or people who’ve been touched by Fairy?”

Another laugh, another slight relaxation of the tension in Maisie’s body language. Castiel was getting better at noticing these things. The movies and television she watched with Dean helped her understand all the ways humans communicated without words. “Hell yeah,” Maisie said. “Why do you think I work here? I’ve got a Fairy grandparent. Weird shit has been happening to me and around me my whole life. Nobody here cares.” She noted Castiel’s empty glass. “Another beer?”

“No, just ginger ale. I might have to drive back to the hotel,” Castiel answered with a glance over her shoulder at Dean and Fenella, who were dancing very close together. She wondered just how far Dean was going to take his willingness to be bait for the green lady and she didn’t like most of the possibilities.

“The hotel where you and the hot guy who completely isn’t your boyfriend are both staying?” Maisie asked. Again that arched eyebrow.

“We’re, uh, in town together for, uh, work.” It was amazing how quickly talking with humans could veer into unexpected places. “That reminds me.” She extracted her phone from her back pocket and pulled up an image of John Ponca with his guitar, one of the photos from the family website. “Did you ever have occasion to speak with this man when he performed music here?”

Maisie flinched but tried to hide it. “I thought you weren’t here to do any smiting,” she said with deliberate casualness. She was avoiding looking at the picture on the screen.

“I’m not interested in hurting anyone. Dean – my friend – and I are trying to find out why four men are dead, including this young man. Will you help us?”

Maisie looked around again, more wary this time. The slow song had come to its natural end and couples were starting to leave the dance floor. Dean was on his way back to the bar with Fenella trailing close behind. “Not now, not here,” Maisie said quickly, nearly whispering. “I’ll meet you tomorrow at noon at Holy Cross, the church on Dalton Street. That’s holy ground. We should be safe talking there.”

Castiel nodded. Maisie handed her a glass of ginger ale over ice then smiled at Dean, who had taken up his seat again. Fenella had veered off, seeking other partners. “Another beer?” Maisie asked. 

“Sure thing. I’ll take another pint of that pale ale you have on tap,” he responded.

While Maisie walked away to fetch the beer, Castiel caught Dean’s attention. “I believe she knows something about our case. She is willing to talk to us, but not here. Tomorrow, noon, at a local church,” Castiel explained, being sure to keep her voice under the din of the music and the crowd.

“Gotcha. Good job.” When Maisie returned with his beer, Dean smiled at her and said, “Hey, this is our last round. Bring the check when you get the chance, willya?”

“Sure thing,” Maisie responded with an answering grin. Unsurprisingly, she was far more comfortable with Dean than she was with Castiel, despite all of the reassurances.

While Maisie rung up their bill, Dean leaned a little closer to Castiel and whispered under his breath, “All this Fairy crap is making my skin crawl. I feel like I need a Silkwood shower.”

Castiel sighed. “Is that another reference to a movie I’ve never seen?” That was always a safe bet when Dean used a phrase she didn’t understand.

“Yeah, yeah, I’ll put it on the list,” Dean grumbled. 

A more lively song was playing now and Castiel watched the humans and Fairies mingling to dance with only half an eye. Tonight had been so confusing on so many levels. Too many half-formed thoughts and worries were swirling around in her head, plus a half a dozen emotions she couldn’t name.

Before she knew it, Dean had finished his beer and was putting cash down on the bar. As they rose to grab their coats and leave, Maisie shot them both a friendly smile and a wave. “Hope to see you two again soon.”

“Oh, you can count on it,” Dean responded.

Castiel spent the drive back to the hotel lost in her thoughts. When the car stopped, she had her seatbelt unbuckled before she realized they weren’t parked at the hotel at all, but at the end of a road overlooking a wooded park. “Dean?” she asked, not understanding.

“You’ve been pretty deep in your head since we left the Green Lady. I was expecting a million questions. So, I figure maybe something’s bugging you and I wanted to give us a chance to talk without waking Sam,” he explained. “But only if you wanna talk.”

There was so much. Being out and mingling among ordinary people, watching them go about their ordinary business and wondering for the first time what their lives were like. The way she’d felt when she’d played pool with Dean, so happy to be sharing a thing that he enjoyed and surprised to find that she enjoyed it too, for she could not recall playing a game before. The drunk man who’d slapped her. Dean’s reaction. The bartender who assumed Dean was her boyfriend. The revelation that she wasn’t as human as she’d hoped. The uncomfortable, incomprehensible things she’d felt watching the Fairy woman flirt with Dean and watching him flirt back. How could she pick just one of the things churning in her head right now? Finally, she asked, “May we get out of the car? I need some fresh air.” 

“Sure thing.”

Spring was fully here. Even with this limited human body, she could smell the damp grass and the blooming trees in the night air. She spread her arms a little and leaned her head back, letting a breeze ripple her coat, breathing in deeply, wishing she could taste even a fraction of the things she used to be able to experience. She should have appreciated those angelic senses more when she had them. Dean lounged against the hood of the car, waiting for her to sort out her thoughts. She chose the problem nearest to the surface. “I’m not human.”

“Yeah, you’re an angel. Well, a fallen angel, I guess. What’s the big deal?”

“Angels are creatures of grace. I have no grace. How can I still be an angel? I thought – I hoped, in fact – that my lack of grace meant I was truly a human now. But I’m not. Maisie – the bartender – she knew right away that I wasn’t human. She thought I was another half-Fairy until she touched me and then she glimpsed just a flash of my true form.”

“Wait, I thought humans couldn’t look at your true form?” Dean asked. He remembered Pamela too. What she’d accidentally done to Pamela was one of the reasons why Dean didn’t trust her at first. He’d gotten past it. She never had.

“Maisie got just a glimpse, sideways, like watching a solar eclipse through a filter, not enough to hurt her. Just enough to frighten her and upset me. I look human. I feel . . . very human. But I’m not, not truly.” 

Dean didn’t understand her distress but, bless him, he was trying. “Well, okay, so you must still have some grace, then, and it’s just taking a long time to grow back. Wait long enough and you’ll be back to normal. Isn’t that good?” 

“Humans have souls, Dean,” she explained, regret and sadness forming a tight lump in her chest. “Creatures with souls can be redeemed. They can atone and be forgiven. Angels don’t have souls. We can’t be redeemed. Like Lucifer.”

“You’re comparing yourself to fucking Lucifer?!” She could see that Dean was growing angry now, although that made no sense to her at all. 

“We both disobeyed and fell. We both did horrible things out of pride. We both devastated Heaven --”

“Bullshit. I call bullshit!” Dean interrupted. “I had to listen to Lucifer monologue at me and you are _nothing_ like that asshole. Lucifer is completely sure he is right. He doesn’t care about redemption or being forgiven or fixing things. He wouldn’t give a crap about what two human hunters think of him and he sure as shit wouldn’t stay up to all hours of the morning trying to find a way to fix Sam’s head. You do.”

She heard him, she understood him, but it seemed too facile, too simple by far. Shouldn’t she hurt more for all the evil she’d done? “Dean, if I don’t have a soul, what’s the point of it all? If I don’t have a soul, I can’t possibly –“

“No!” He smacked his palm on the hood of the car for emphasis, then stood, stepping right up to her – something far more imposing now than it had been when they were nearly the same height. His eyes were a bright, ferocious blaze. “Human or angel, soul or not, I do not give a crap. You do not get the luxury of giving up! That’s not what we do! You keep on trying! Do you understand that, Cas?!”

“You truly believe that? That what I am doesn’t matter?”

“Am I in the habit of saying shit I don’t believe?!” Dean demanded. 

“Not to me,” she responded quietly. “I don’t understand you, Dean. How can you have such faith in me after what I’ve done?”

“Because, when push came to shove, you were willing to get blown up by an archangel – twice – to back my Hail Mary plays. Because I’ve lost too many friends to give on the ones I’ve got left.” 

Castiel laid a hand on his chest, just over his heart, expecting him to flinch away, but he didn’t. “You’re thinking with this, not with your head.”

“I do that,” Dean replied, all of that arrogance she often found so frustrating turned suddenly endearing. He pressed one of his hands, callused and surprisingly warm, over hers so that she could feel the solid, human thrum of his heart through his shirt. "You can do this, Cas. I know you can."

In the face of Dean’s unshakable faith, all her worries and fears seemed very small things. “For you, Dean. I’ll keep trying for you,” she promised. Something shifted in Dean’s eyes then, his look going soft in a way it never seemed to do for anyone else. It made her feel things, that look, things that she didn’t understand and couldn’t put a name to. She wanted to ask Dean, but she was reluctant to break this moment, afraid he would notice how close they were and pull away. She hated it when he pulled away.

A small white dog, pulling at a leash held by a tired man, barked sharply. Moment broken, they stepped back, hands dropping to their sides, Dean refusing all of a sudden to look her in the eyes.

“So, uh, yeah, we should get back to check on Sammy,” he said, walking around to the driver’s door. “That chick Fenella is some sorta creepy sex Fairy, but not the killer. She even warned me off of investigating the murders. So our best lead now is that bartender and we’d all better be on our game when we talk to her tomorrow.” On the short drive back to the hotel, Dean turned the music up, making further conversation impossible.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Work and real life and 2020 being 2020 derailed me for a bit but I'm able to write again and there will be more chapters coming. Thank you for your patience.


	7. Chapter 7

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> I apologize for the long delay in getting back to this. But I'm back on my game and updates will be coming more regularly.

DEAN

Dean threw himself into the shower the moment they got back to the hotel, eager to get the feeling of Fairy glamour off of his skin. Cranking the water up to scalding, he scrubbed at the places where the creepy sex Fairy chick had touched him. He only wished he could blame Fairies for everything that was freaking him out right now. 

He’d almost kissed Cas. 

He’d was going to kiss her, would have kissed her, if not for that barking dog bringing him to his senses in time.

What the fucking hell had he been thinking?

The moment he had started feeling light and loose and having fun, the moment he had started noticing how good Cas looked, well, they should have beat feet right outta there. But no, they’d stayed, and he’d dug himself deeper into the hole. And then Cas just _trusting_ him like that, as if broken, busted up Dean Winchester, with his dumbass pep talks and his head full of movie quotes, somehow had the big important answers she needed about life. As if he was somehow enough to make this whole shitshow worthwhile for her. That’s when he’d gone right over the cliff, like the Coyote after the Road Runner, because fuck it if that wasn’t the best thing anyone had said or even thought about him in forever. In that moment, it hadn’t even occurred to him to argue that he wasn’t worth it. In that moment, all he’d wanted to do was kiss Cas until they were both breathless and then invite her to break in the back seat of the Barracuda with him.

Well thank God for cock-blocking dogs, Dean chided himself, because realistically, that’s not how it would have gone at all. As much as he prided himself on his kissing skills, Cas . . . Cas just would have been confused. Or worse, angry. But most likely confused. He knew how hard she was struggling with human feelings. He knew damn well that she was, if not actually still a virgin, then so damn close to one as made no difference. How the hell could he even think of putting her in such an awkward position, especially when she had no one else to turn to in the whole goddamn world except him and Sam. It would have been a dick move on his part and he fucking well should have known better than to even think about it.

Even as one half of his brain mentally ripped himself a new one, another part of his brain, a traitorous part of his brain, piped up with the vivid memory of Cas-in-Jimmy Novak pressing Meg against a wall and showing her what he learned from the pizza man. God, that had been hot – and really, really weird, but definitely hot – and he’d spent way too much time thinking about that kiss and what it might be like to be on the receiving end. What if . . . what if he’d kissed Cas and she’d responded like _that_? Just brushing up against that possibility in his head put butterflies in his gut and got a stir of approval from his dick.

But.

But. 

There was always a but.

So what if he kissed Cas and she’d kissed him back and they did end up screwing each other’s brains out in the back of the car? What would they have done _after_? It wasn’t like Cas was going anywhere. She had nowhere to go. He didn’t want her to go anywhere. But then it would be like a relationship and he had no idea how to do relationships, not without fucking things up beyond repair, like he’d done with Lisa. After Lisa, he’d sworn he’d never be weak like that again. He’d sworn he would never allow himself to wound anyone like that again. He was good enough for one night wonders, but not for afters. He was not safe for everyday use. Cas, newly human and still mostly broken, was the last person who needed Dean Winchester’s own particular brand of toxic relationship fuckery in her life, not when they were just getting back to being good again, to being friends again.

When the hotel pipes clanged and the water temperature shifted down a few degrees, Dean realized he’d been letting his head run away with him. The water wasn’t cold yet, but hell, cold showers should definitely be a thing for him until he learned to keep all his Cas-related thoughts on a much shorter very friend-shaped leash. He deliberately took his time finishing up and getting ready for bed, hoping that Cas would be asleep by the time he ventured out of the bathroom. 

For once, luck came through for him. Cas was fast asleep in an exhausted heap on the pull-out couch, face smooshed into the flimsy hotel pillow. He stood there in the doorway between the sitting room and the bedroom for way too long, watching her and kicking himself for making everything too complicated. He needed to put all of his feelings about Cas in a box, bury that box somewhere, and never look for it again. Otherwise, some day he was going to slip up and do something incredibly, mind-bogglingly stupid, and then Cas really would disappear out of his life for good and he’d have only himself to blame.

In the morning, Dean screwed his head on straight, downed a few extra cups of hotel lobby coffee, and put last night’s head trip behind him. He insisted on getting to Holy Cross Church nearly an hour before their scheduled meeting with Maisie the bartender. This case had him worried and uneasy. The best way to deal with worried and uneasy was to know exactly what they were walking into. 

After flashing his badge at the church caretaker and the priest, he and Cas took a long look around the place for anything suspicious. They didn’t find anything, but that was somehow worse. This whole Fairy thing felt like a trap waiting to spring shut. He wished for a moment that Sam was there, but they had agreed it made more sense for Sam to head over to Elgin to check with that town’s cop shop for any other deliberately overlooked (or covered up) clues. Besides, Cas said the bartender was nervous about talking to the two of them. No reason to spook a friendly witness by adding someone else to the meeting.

Dean took one last circuit around the outside of the church building and headed inside. He found Cas in the main chapel, looking up at the stained glass window depicting the Annunciation with one of the saddest expressions he’d ever seen. Then, to his surprise, she knelt down in the rearmost pew and started praying silently. When she stood up a few moments later, her shoulders were slumped in visible disappointment.

“Anyone pick up the phone?” Dean asked, trying to be casual but pretty sure he already knew the answer.

“No. I’d hoped the holy ground might help, but still nothing. I suppose silence is better than descending on me in wrath and fury. Yet I do keep hoping . . .”

When it was clear she wasn’t going to finish that sentence, Dean asked, “Hoping they’ll let you go home?”

Cas shook her head. “I wasn’t praying for myself. I haven’t earned forgiveness from Heaven. I was asking Heaven to help me find a way to heal Sam.”

Every time was sure he knew what was going on in Cas’s head, Dean reflected, she’d pull the rug out from under him just like that. Just another reason why it was stupid of him to think that Cas might ever – could ever – be interested in him as anything but a friend. Compared to Cas, he was a monkey with a hammer. Good for breaking things that needed breaking, but not good for thinking deep thoughts.

The main door opened, hinges creaking, alerting them to Maisie’s arrival. The bartender looked nervous and kept glancing over her shoulder. They all sat down on one of the long benches in the foyer, Dean on one side of her, Cas on the other. “Agent Blackmore, FBI,” he said, showing her the badge. “You’ve met our consultant, Professor Glover.”

“I don’t think that’s true,” Maisie said, her expression skeptical. “I can tell when you’re lying and it’s hard to trust liars, even if, ya know, they think they have a good reason for lying.”

Well, Dean thought, if Maisie already knew for a fact that Fairies were real, she could probably deal with the idea of monster hunters. “Okay, no, we’re not really FBI. My name’s Dean. You’ve already met Cas. We’re what’s called hunters. We deal with all the things that go bump in the night and hurt people. Vampires. Werewolves. Ghosts. You name it, I’ve ganked it. We’re in town because of the murders. We know there’s a Fairy involved.” 

Maisie’s eyes widened just a little and she nodded. Unease was bursting out of her in a dozen different kinds of fidgets, which, even more than the trendy clothes and the piercings, made Dean wonder just how young the bartender was. Old enough to be serving booze, but clearly not much older. Dean shifted in his seat to put more of his body between Maisie and the door and put on his best protective big brother attitude, the one that always settled scared kids. “What did you want to tell us, Maisie?” he asked, as gently as he could manage.

“Okay. Yeah. Okay. Here goes. First thing is, you gotta understand about this town. There have _always_ been Fairies in Belchamp. According to my grandpa, back in, like, the 1800s, five families came here from Scotland – the Ramseys, the MacPhersons, the MacNivens, the Drummonds and the Buchanans. They used Fairy gold to buy the land to build Belchamp in return for a promise that Fairies would always be welcome here. They kept that promise and made sure all their children and children’s children kept it too. So there are Fairies, like, everywhere. If someplace in town is safe for Fairies, it’s marked with a special sign, some sorta Fairy sign. You look around. You’ll see it, like, all over.”

Cas pulled out one of the flyers for the Green Lady and showed Maisie the symbol she couldn’t translate. Maisie nodded. “Yeah, that’s it. The Green Lady welcomes Fairies – you saw that last night – and it’s owned by Timothy Drummond and Rosemary Ramsey.”

“Drummond as in Detective Drummond?” Dean asked, getting a sinking feeling in his gut. 

“Yeah. Detective Drummond is Tim’s cousin. Rosie is related to the Police Chief and the Mayor,” Maisie responded.

“Son of a bitch.” It all made sense. The sloppy police work. The hostility to the Feds looking in on the case.

“It’s worse than that. I mean, like, half the town’s related to one of the families. I am. My grandpa, the one who married a Fairy woman, was a Buchanan. The families, they all look out for each other and, like, watch each other’s backs. It’s newcomers like the Poncas who get screwed.” Maisie ducked her head and started rolling the hem of her brightly-colored shirt in her fingers. 

“I didn’t know the other guys, but I knew John and Shawn and I liked them, I like them a lot. They were nice, and they tipped really well, and, like, the music they made was just so damn beautiful. I hate what happened to them. I hate that I’m never gonna to hear them play music again or laugh over John’s dumb jokes or find out how Shawn liked the _Avengers_ movie.” Maisie wiped a tear away with the back of the hand that wasn’t fidgeting with her shirt. “Tim and Rosie shoulda known, naming a place in Belchamp ‘The Green Lady.’ They shoulda known – maybe they did know – that one of _them_ was going to hear and come see. And one did. _She_ came.”

“Is she a _glaistig_? A green woman?” Cas asked.

Maisie nodded. “All creepy goat legs and everything. She calls herself Táethen. I dunno if it’s her real name. True Names have power in Fairy, but anyway, that’s what she calls herself. At first, she wasn’t bad at all, she just liked to sit and listen to the music and dance. But about five months ago, something changed. Táethen started talking about wanting ‘her due’ and ‘what she was owed.’ And then . . . you know what started happening then.” Her voice caught and she swallowed hard.

“Hey, hey, Maisie, you’re doing great. We just need a little more,” Dean assured. The girl nodded, giving him permission to go on. “Okay, do you know where we can find this green lady? Where she holes up?”

“I’m sorry, I don’t know where she goes when she’s not at the pub. Somewhere near water, maybe. The hems of her skirts are always wet. Sorry I don’t know more.”

“Okay. We can work with that.” Dean stood up, took a quick glance around. “All right, Cas, you get back to the hotel and dig in to the lore and figure out for sure how we take out a green lady. I’m going to head to the town records office, check out some maps and building specs, see if I can figure out where a killer Fairy chick might hide out in this town that’s near water. When Sam gets back, we’ll make a plan of attack.”

“Wait, what about me? If anyone finds out I spilled the beans, I’m dead meat,” Maisie protested, rising to her feet. 

“Maisie, you should come with me,” Cas said calmly. “I can ward the hotel room against Fairies and keep you safe until this is all over.” 

“You got a car?” Dean asked. Maisie nodded. “Good,” he said. “I’ll grab a cab to the town offices and then meet up with Sam on his way back from Elgin.”

Maisie headed out the main door, Cas only a few steps behind. Dean stopped her with a light hand on her arm. “You got this, right?” he asked quietly.

“Yes, I’ve got this,” she assured him. Dean squeezed Cas’s arm and let her go.

The prim-faced white woman who sat behind the desk at the Belchamp town records office was more than willing to let the friendly FBI man with the nice smile look over anything he asked for. By the time Sam called, Dean was sure he had looked at every single building plan, street map and spec map on file with the town of Belchamp for every building between the Green Lady pub and the river. Unfortunately, he’d found nothing that shouted out “hiding place for killer Fairy.” If the town records were also part of the great big Fairy conspiracy that was this stupid town, he had no idea where to go next.

“God, Sam, my eyes are going to start bleeding if I have to look at any more blueprints. Tell me you got somethin’ real.”

“Yeah, I do. The cops in Elgin actually did their jobs and interviewed a bunch of David Boddicker’s friends. Guess what Boddicker did for a hobby? Urban spelunking,” Sam reported.

“What the hell’s that?”

“Exploring sewers and underground tunnels in cities and stuff like that.”

“God, so-called normal people do the weirdest shit,” Dean remarked.

“Boddicker’s friends told the Elgin cops that he was planning to explore the sewer system in Belchamp and search out a supposed old Cold War-era fallout bunker somewhere in town. When he went missing, everyone assumed he’d gotten hurt exploring and tried to get the Belchamp cops interested in looking for him. They couldn’t get any response out of Belchamp until his body was found,” Sam explained. “So see if you can pull maps of the sewers and get confirmation on the existence of that bunker. Sounds like a perfect hide-out.”

“Yeah, on it.”

When Dean asked for sewer system maps, however, the overly helpful desk clerk suddenly turned cold, insisting that those maps were not available to the public. “Homeland Security directive, you know,” she explained with a thin-lipped smile.

“Ma’am, I am an FBI agent, not a member of the public,” Dean responded, flashing his badge again. “I am fully aware of the Homeland Security directive and it doesn’t apply to requests from other federal agencies.”

The clerk gave a critical once-over to his badge and ID, then adjusted her glasses along the bridge of her sharp nose. “Well, I just don’t know. Chief Ramsey was very insistent about keeping that sort of information out of the wrong hands. Maybe I should call him and check that it’s okay.”

The last thing they needed was someone telling the same people covering up the green lady’s murders exactly where they were searching for her. Gritting his teeth against the urge to give the clerk a piece of his mind, Dean thanked her and told her not to worry, he’d let his boss deal with it.

Once he got outside, he called Sam. “No dice. How far out are you?”

“With traffic, about a half hour,” Sam replied.

“Fine, I’ll hit the coffee shop across the street, see if I can dig up any more dirt from the locals.”

The coffee shop was a nice, cozy Mom and Pop place, not one of the big chains. This late in the afternoon it was practically empty, just two teenagers in the corner drinking something froofy with lots of unnecessary whipped cream on top. Dean sat at the counter, ordered a simple black coffee and gave a considering eye to the last few remaining donuts sitting under glass. The bell on the door jangled, and Dean looked up to see Sergeant Hwang come into the shop. Hwang noticed Dean immediately. He took the seat at the counter next to Dean and flagged down the owner for a black coffee for himself.

“Best coffee in town. I always take my afternoon break here,” Hwang noted casually. 

Keeping it equally casual, Dean responded, “I was surprised to find a fresh pot at nearly four in the afternoon, but I’m sure not complaining.”

“Yeah, they know I’m coming in around now, so they always make one fresh for me.” Hwang drank his coffee slowly, keeping half and eye on Dean. “Donuts are pretty good too,” he added after a moment. He flagged down the owner again. “Hey, Linda, give the Agent here the last powdered sugar on me. I’ll be paying for his coffee too. Assuming that’s okay with the Bureau?”

Dean chuckled. “No one’s going to give me grief about having a coffee and donut on the locals, don’t worry.”

The donut was as excellent as the coffee. As he ate, Dean watched Hwang turning his coffee mug in little half circles in his hands, the cop’s own tightly controlled version of the fidgeting that Maisie had displayed only a few hours earlier. “Somethin’ on your mind, Sergeant?”

Hwang lowered his voice to a whisper. “This is a good town. A real good town. Moved here when I got out of the Marines because after six years in the sandbox I wanted a quiet, green place. I’ve been happy here. I don’t want to lose that.”

“You warning me off?” Dean asked, his voice equally low.

“No.”

“So what, then?”

Hwang look around, then reached into his breast pocket, pulled out a card, and slipped it to Dean. “If you get stonewalled, I mean really stuck, that’s my number. I’ll take your call and do what I can.” 

Dean nodded and took the card. Hwang finished his coffee in one gulp and left without another word.


End file.
